Jules and Jim (Jules et Jim), from the heavy hitter of French New Wave cinema, François Truffaut, is one of the highlight retrospective pieces of this film festival. Truffaut directed the black and white film, first released in 1962, which he also adapted from the Henri-Pierre Roché novel (based on the latter’s own real-life love triangle).
The story is simple; the execution complex. Jules (Oskar Werner) is a timid Austrian and Jim (Henri Serre) is a French ladies-man (Sancho to Quixote). Aspiring writers, living in pre-WW1 Paris, they are the very best of friends who share art, books and women quite freely until they meet the impetuous, unpredictable and beguiling Catherine (Jeanne Moreau); their perfect and timeless woman.
Catherine, daughter of a noble and a commoner, a teacher of Shakespeare, and an epic tease, is unable to be satiated by all the attention all the time. A post-war Bohemian lifestyle experiment-of-sorts leads the trio, inextricably linked by desire and the inability to leave ‘happy’ alone, to spend the next few decades in on-again-off-again trysts with, quelle surprise, cruel and unusual consequences.
Truffaut and cinematographer Raoul Coutard contrast the Belle Époque era brilliantly with the first world war and beyond, but the film stealer is Moreau whose transition during the film’s 25 year story, is so cleverly crafted, her character, with all it’s devious nuances, unpredictability, and power over the men, must be considered one of the best femme fatales of all time.
Truffaut employed techniques heralded as revelatory in this film; unique mise-en-scène, narration (Michael Subor), freeze frames, screen swipes, stock footage, tracking shots (achieved with a bicycle dolly), static shots, characters talking extensively over each other and, my favourite, from the race on the bridge scene, surely the precursor to the “walk and talk”, the “run and puff”. The film’s influence continues today throughout film, television, music and literature.
Look out for the great mail mix-up scenes for those of you who remember a time when the only way to write to another was by letter that took some days to be delivered.
Touted as a romance-drama, Jules and Jim has shades of modern melodrama with a great and at-times whimsical score by Georges Delerue, a moustachioed cross-dressing Catherine, and whimsy coming out of it’s ménage à trios. It is an intriguing look into three characters that become unhinged by their own hands, wrapped in the very best of cinematic history.
This film is an absolute must for film students. Find out where we’ve come from, so you can know where you’re going.
Reviewed by Gordon Forester
Rating out of 10: 8
The Alliance Française French Film Festival screens exclusively at the Palace Nova Eastend cinemas from 20 March – 8 April 2014.
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