Mississippi Mermaid [Blu-ray]

Mississippi Mermaid / (Sub Ws)

Overview

Louis (Jean-Paul Belmondo) is the wealthy factory owner living on a French island off the coast of Africa. When he advertises for a mail order bride, he receives a picture and letter from the woman who agrees to join him. The woman who shows up is not the one in the photo, but Julie (Catherine Deneuve) explains she sent the picture of a friend. The two are soon married and Louis takes ill soon thereafter. As his health worsens, Julie leaves after depleting their joint bank account of all the money. After a frantic drive to the bank, Louis hires a private detective to search for her. Locating Julie in a sleazy dance hall, she explains she is an orphan and was forced into the scam by a man she met on board the ship. The man killed the mail order bride and dumped her body overboard, replacing her with Julie to bleed the wealthy Louis dry. The two try to reconcile after Louis shoots and kills the detective. Hiding out in a remote mountain cabin, Julie slowly poisons Louis with rat poison in this disturbing story of greed and murder.

Product Details

Release Date:	02/14/2023
UPC:	0738329261801
Original Release:	1969
Rating:	R
Source:	KINO VIDEO
Language:	English
Time:	2:03:00
Sales rank:	12,815

Cast & Crew

Performance Credits

Jean-Paul Belmondo	Louis
Catherine Deneuve	Julie
Michel Bouquet	Comolli
Nelly Borgeaud	Berthe Roussel
Marcel Berbert	Jardine
Roland Thenot	Richard
Yves Drouhet	Actor
Martine Ferri?re	Landlady
Martine Ferriere	Actor
Antoine Duhamel	Composer

Technical Credits

Francois Truffaut

Francois Truffaut	Screenwriter
Marcel Berbert	Producer,Executive Producer
Ren? Levert	Sound/Sound Designer

Editorial Reviews

The wickedly pretty Mississippi Mermaid is one of François Truffaut's more overlooked films. The twisting plot involves Louis Mahé (Jean-Paul Belmondo), a tobacco plantation owner on a far-off tropical isle who places an ad in Paris for a mail-order bride. She arrives in the Yves St. Laurent resplendence of Julie Roussel (Catherine Deneuve). After exchanging vows, evidence piles up that suggests Julie is not really Julie. By the time the proof comes, she's already siphoned money from the couple's joint bank account. He puts a detective on the trail, and while faking a cure in an asylum, sees TV footage of her in a new, Playboyesque club and pursues her with a homicidal vengeance. But the sight of her, the revelation of her real name (Marion, also a '60s Hitchcock staple), and her recounting of her shady, juvenile delinquent past makes him love her all the more. The two continue to bicker, fight, make up, and hide out from the cops, as they discover that this love, a "joy and misery," is the real thing. At first glance, Mississippi Mermaid seems very indebted to Marnie, Alfred Hitchcock's own tale of a misidentified blonde tormenting an obsessed guy until both experience -- in the words of Hitchcock -- a "degradation of love." The new Mississippi Mermaid DVD goes well beyond this by adding 13 minutes to a previous home video cut. This restoration can only be called a revelation. The two brand-new scenes soften the characters -- one is a monologue from Louis to "Julie" about her beauty that would seem ridiculous in less caring hands than Truffaut's. The other "new" scene involves a suave gag where Marion phonographically etches an earnest confession of desire to Louis only to have it run over by a passing truck. Both additions are invaluable as they humanize Deneuve's character -- an archetype whose malice fit Hitchcock's fashionable icy blonde persona all too well. Mississippi Mermaid supplies a lovely, rich example of how François Truffaut can meld both sides of a filmmaker's brain: in this case, a cool, studied suspense technique with his own classically romantic sincerity.