The Francois Truffaut movie Quentin Tarantino has remarkably never seen
With a trademark thread of overzealous violence, dark comedy and zany character development, Quentin Tarantino has transfixed moviegoers for over three decades. As an auteur, Tarantino values individuality, but of his nine movies so far, 1997’s Jackie Brown was the only wholly original script concept.
When he was 22, Tarantino secured his first full-time job at Video Archives, a store in Manhattan Beach, California. As explained in several interviews, he didn’t become a cinephile because he worked there; he worked there because he was a cinephile. The keen youngster began to expand a vast pool of influence as he got cracking on some early screenplays.
Instead of attending film school, like many of his luminaries, Tarantino simply observed, absorbing the greatest aspects of each director’s nuances. Discussing his approach to education with The Talks, he once explained: “[My] head is a sponge. I listen to what everyone says, I watch little idiosyncratic behaviour, people tell me a joke, and I remember it. People tell me an interesting story in their life, and I remember it.”
After the turn of the millennium, Tarantino introduced one of his most memorable characters in the two-part movie series, Kill Bill. The plot follows the Bride, an assassin portrayed by Uma Thurman who embarks on a bloody trail of vengeance after waking from a coma induced by a point-blank gunshot wound. The ultimate mission is to kill Bill, her former boss, who attempted to kill her four years prior.
Both volumes of the Kill Bill story were met with enthusiasm from critics and moviegoers alike; however, some noted the movie’s striking similarity to Francois Truffaut’s 1968 classic, The Bride Wore Black. Beyond its apparent influences in martial arts movies, grindhouse cinema and westerns, Tarantino has previously hailed Toshiya Fujita’s 1973 film Lady Snowblood as a central influence on Kill Bill but denies any connection to Truffaut.
In a past interview with Tomohiro Machiyama, Tarantino was asked about the apparent narrative similarities between Kill Bill and The Bride Wore Black. “I know of it, but I’ve never seen it,” Tarantino asserted. “Everyone is like, ‘Oh, this is really similar to The Bride Wore Black.’ I’ve heard of the movie. It’s based on a Cornell Woolrich novel, too, but it’s a movie I’ve never seen.”
Continuing, Tarantino revealed why he’s never bothered watching the movie. “The reason I’ve never seen it is because… I’ve just never been a huge Truffaut fan,” he revealed. “So that’s why I never got around to see it. I’m not rejecting it; I just never saw it. I’m a Godard fan, not a Truffaut fan. So I know of it, I know all that stuff, but it’s a movie I’ve never seen.
At that point, Machiyama explained to the filmmaker that the Bride in The Bride Wore Black also creates a “list of names she ticks off.”
“Oh, is that in there too?” Tarantino replied, cementing his ignorance.
Watch the trailer for The Bride Wore Black below.
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