This movie begins at the languorous tropics,in the tropical,colonial languor,and it ends in snow,winter and cold winds.
The music contributes a lot to the film's pace.La Sirène Du Mississipi is dedicated to Renoir,yes,but it constitutes an implicit tribute to Hitchcock,and there are many Hitchcockian elements that can be listed here:the score (notice that Truffaut did not like it:"the score of Mississippi Mermaid isn't very good",in a '70 interview); the photography;a certain sense of the movie as an object,as a thing of art;the irony (a bed scene is juxtaposed to the image of the money greedily caressed by Mrs. Deneuve);the fevered dream-sequence;the suspense;Mrs. Deneuve's beauty;a certain weirdness;the foreboding music.Yes,La Sirène Du Mississipi looks,indeed,very Hitchcockian,but in a meritorious and creative way.I think Truffaut saw in the Hitchcockian thrillers a genre on its own.His film is not a pastiche,but a creation in this genre.The gentleness,the ardor,the smoothness,the gentlemanly comic,the smooth-tempered frankness,the contemplation in such a dynamic show,are all Truffaut's.
Mrs. Deneuve looks jaunty,fetching and fervid,and La Sirène has some fetishist notes:Belmondo burns Mrs. Deneuve 's lingerie,as if to punish his missing wife;playing the fool with Mrs. Deneuve,he hides her underwear.This is building Mrs. Deneuve's sexual myth,in a low-brow,fetishist key.
Belmondo knows how to look dispassionate, credulous,agile, scatter-brained,delusion-ed, puzzled,scathing,pushing, resigned, feverish:a businessman from the Tropics,a believer in some values,educated,somehow naive and trusting ;he wears his white pullovers.As a character,"Louis Mahé" changes,evolves,multiform and malleable,and becomes more and more interesting as a man.
I see Truffaut put heart in La Sirène:as I said,he dedicated it to Renoir,followed in Hitchcock's footsteps,and used an Hitchockian aesthetics,and made "Louis Mahé" read eagerly Balzac ("I love books and films equally, but how I love them! When I first saw Citizen Kane, I was certain that never in my life had I loved a person the way I loved that film. My feeling is expressed in that scene in The 400 Blows where Antoine lights a candle before the picture of Balzac.",Truffaut in '70) .But Truffaut later disowned,repudiated his fine show.The critics also treated bad "La Sirène ...".(Truffaut said:"The critics didn't like it, nor did the public--perhaps because Deneuve and Belmondo didn't appear in their usual sort of roles.")Maybe,maybe it didn't live up to its author's expectations ,he wanted to make more than an amusing and thrilling show;Truffaut wanted to make,I guess,a Vertigo or a North by Northwest of his own-that is,an ultimate masterpiece,something very poetic,etc..Well,maybe it's not all that. ("Whatever is wrong with that film is my fault and not the fault of my stars.")Though,despite the critics' coolness and even Truffaut's own disappointment,"La Sirène ..." is a movie I admire.It may not be the masterpiece wished for,it may not have lived up to Truffauts ambitions,yet it is a thrilling show and it offers much delight;it certainly has its own beauty,its picturesque,its poetry,its suspense.He wanted a masterpiece;he got a very good movie instead.It is better than "Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me".I must say I am as excited as Truffaut was with Belmondo climbing Mrs. Deneuve's balcony.Truffaut said his "Mermaid" was "a smash" in Japan;it is obvious he did not considered it as a bad movie,but as one that could have been better.
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