Mississippi Mermaid

Written and directed by François Truffaut, the 1969 French-Italian romantic crime drama La Sirène du Mississipi (Mississippi Mermaid) adapts the 1947 novel Waltz into Darkness by Cornell Woolrich, published under his William Irish pseudonym. The story follows Louis Mahé, a wealthy tobacco planter on Réunion Island in the Indian Ocean, who becomes engaged by correspondence to a woman he has never met. When the ship arrives, the woman who steps off is not the one in the photograph, yet he marries her anyway. She soon vanishes with his money, revealing an elaborate deception, and Louis's search for her turns into a dangerous obsession that carries him across the south of France. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve star in the leading roles. The film was remade in 2001 as Original Sin, directed by Michael Cristofer with Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas.