Mississippi Mermaid (La Sirène du Mississipi)

Mississippi Mermaid (French title La Sirène du Mississipi) is a 1969 French-Italian co-production by François Truffaut that blends romantic drama with a crime story in a neo-noir mood. Made in French and running 119 minutes, it was written by Truffaut and produced by Les Films du Carrosse. Jean-Paul Belmondo and Catherine Deneuve share the leads. It opened in France on 18 June 1969, ranked among that year's twenty top-grossing films there, and is dedicated to Jean Renoir.

The story begins on Réunion, an island in the Indian Ocean. Louis, a wealthy tobacco planter, goes to meet the woman he has become engaged to through letters and knows only from a photograph. The woman who steps off the ship is not the one in the picture, yet he marries her anyway. Louis's attachment hardens into an obsession that sends him on a dangerous trail across the south of France. Michel Bouquet and Nelly Borgeaud appear in supporting roles alongside Alexandra Stewart and Delphine Seyrig.

The screenplay adapts Cornell Woolrich's 1947 novel Waltz into Darkness, published under the pseudonym William Irish. It was shot on Réunion and in the south of France, and was remade in 2001 as Original Sin, directed by Michael Cristofer and starring Angelina Jolie and Antonio Banderas.