Christopher Culver Francois Truffaut's 1962 French New Wave classic JULES ET JIM tells the story of two pals and the woman they both fall in love with. In 1912, Jules (Oskar Werner), an Austrian living in France, strikes up a deep friendship with Parisian writer Jim (Henri Serre). The two are the best of buddies, downright inseparable. After they have each experienced a series of attempts and fiascoes with the local ladies, Jules meets Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), a vivacious and free-spirited woman, and they move back to Austria together and marry. The outbreak of World War I separates the two friends and years pass, but after the Armistice, Jim visits Jules and Catherine and finds their marriage rocky. Catherine decides to leave Jules, and she turns her affection to Jim, but this doesn't shake the two men's firm friendship.The bond between the two men, and the vivacity and ethereal nature of Catherine, make for a film initially so positive and heartwarming that it is easy to see why JULES ET JIM has won a very wide audience beyond many other French films of the mid-20th-century. The script lets Moreau, already one of the most legendary actresses of her age, show off all kinds of tricks she had long honed in the theatre.But the story increasingly takes on tragic tones, for Catherine is a deeply conflicted person, desirous of the two men by turns but ultimately unable to find happiness. In a modern Hollywood film a character like Catherine would probably be written as the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" archetype, existing purely to show the male interests how to love life and live it to the fullest, but lacking any life of her own. In Truffaut's film, however, the depths of Catherine's psyche is what ultimately draws the plot. Yet because the film is still roughly told from the point of view of the two male characters, the film does convincingly depict the sort of relationship where you love someone and must support them through their struggles, but that person still remains ultimately unknowable.In spite of being a film of wide appeal due to its likable characters and charm, JULES ET JIM is still an exemplar of the French New Wave. It shows some relatively innovative features such as jump takes, freeze frames, and carousel-like camera work, all shot by legendary cinematographer Raoul Coutard who was also responsible for Jean-Luc Godard's films of this era. Truffaut and his peers in the French New Wave were mad about the history of film, and here we get a sort of encyclopedia of film: allusions to the silent era, use of newsreels and other archival footage, and a voice-over narrator that comes in and out.I enjoyed watching JULES ET JIM and there were some moments that I am sure I will long remember – Marie Dubois's brief supporting role as one of Jules' early love interests is laugh-out-loud funny. Yet I must admit that I was disappointed by the pacing in the last third of the film, which feels clumsy. The film also gradually abandons its New Wave freshness as the tragic part of the story takes over, and one already sees Truffaut drifting back towards conventional filmmaking. So, I personally would not include it among my top films. Still, its classic status is easy to understand and it's worth a look for any curious viewer.

rhoda-9 Yes, Jules and Jim is a mesmerising, invigorating movie, full of life, love, happiness, sensuality, charm, and, not only that, it's French! But Truffaut's most famous film is not just ooh la la--it's an enormously sophisticated work, with a witty script and playful, daring camera work. In a way, it's THE film of the Sixties--a bit ahead of its time, for what we mean by "the Sixties" got going a few years later.But do I love it? No. Because the film also encapsulates, for me, what I so greatly disliked about the Sixties, the time in which I became an adult.The film was received with rapture, except by a few critics, including Dwight Macdonald and Stanley Kauffmann, who called it "less than meets the eye." They were denounced by Pauline Kael, queen of the hipsters, for being squares. And yet, today, who looks like the square--if by that one means someone insensitive and naive? Kael was normally clear-eyed, but, in her enthusiasm for the movie's spirit and technique, she bought a cynical fantasy, the one aimed at a young, educated, restless public.You see, in the Sixties the great thing to be was not intelligent or rich but "creative." I put it in quotes because the appearance of creativity often received the same adulation as the real thing. It was a time when the art scene started to go wild, when the business of covering yourself in paint, or whatever, and rolling on the floor was acclaimed. If you weren't genuinely creative, you had to get some way of faking it if you wanted to get respect, or laid. Women, of course, had an easy substitute for creativity. They could be selfish, capricious, inexplicably cruel or untrustworthy, and be acclaimed as their own great creation--marvelous, mysterious, incomprehensible WOMAN. (That is, of course, if they were good- looking; otherwise, someone who pulled these same stunts was just a nasty bitch.) This all happened before feminism, when it became fashionable for women to be serious, responsible grown-ups.So Catherine, in the movie, is WOMAN to the nines. But, even though she is very beautiful, she is still a nasty bitch. Surely a major aspect of WOMANliness is motherhood? Well, Catherine has a little girl who adores her, but she abandons the child for a lover (farewell scene not shown, and little girl never seen again in the movie--might it prejudice us against Catherine?). Then she abandons the lover when she is bored-- or thwarted. If she can't get her own way (even though the man is doing the right thing, or it's not his fault), someone has to pay for it.It is commonly said that suicide is an act of anger. This couldn't be more obvious in the case of Catherine, who, in the act of killing herself, drags an unwilling lover to his grave. Talk about wanting to have the last word! This is no starry Liebestod but petulance writ large.Jules and Jim may be based on a novel, but Truffaut's attraction to the material, as well as his recapitulating it twenty years later in The Woman Next Door, shows that the fantasy is very much his own. His immature, masochistic passion for this kind of woman was sad, but his presenting it to young, impressionable filmgoers as an enviable romance, with added culture (at one point they all read Goethe's Elective Affinities, also about a threesome) is wicked. The first thing about love is that it is UNselfish.

elvircorhodzic JULES AND JIM is a romantic drama about a transience, love, friendship, patience and perversions.A bit shy writer from Austria forges a friendship with an extroverted Frenchman. They share an interest in the world of the arts and the Bohemian lifestyle. Once they meet a free-spirited and capricious girl, who has reminded them on a serene smile of an ancient statue of a goddess. The three hang out together. The two friends fall in love with her and her attitudes toward life. She gets, a few days before the Great War, married to a young writer from Austria. Both men serve during the war, on opposing sides. After the war, the Frenchman visit his friends, who now have a daughter, in their home. Their marriage is in crisis...Mr. Truffaut has presented a complex and enigmatic love triangle in a rather confusing way. A tendency toward unusual ideals and the perfect woman, through a free love making, ends tragically. Here, we need to distinguish between a rebellious nature of one of the protagonists and ideals of free love. This film becomes a charming and exciting through a subjective view of love and friendship.An authentic scenery is pretty amazing. Characterization is great, because, among other things, it is difficult to draw the line between positive and negative character.Jeanne Moreau as Catherine is a beautiful, attractive, intelligent and seductive woman. Her stubbornness, extreme expressions and femininity, despite some shortcomings, satisfy both male character in this film. She, like "whirlwind", changes life around her.Oskar Werner (Jules) and Henri Serre (Jim) are typical for the protagonists of the French New Wave. The two young intellectual who does not know what they want. Jules is intelligent and thoughtful, Jim is melancholic and vivid. Their shared passion for writing, books, travels and women becomes part of a compromise, which their beloved woman begins to conduct.This is a very appealing film with themes that have always been exciting and topical.

JoeKulik I interpret Jules And Jim (1962) as a social protest film against the traditional notions of marriage & heterosexual love. Many of the reviews on this site focus on the triangle of Jules, Jim, & Catherine. But there are other notable characters in the film such as Gilberte, Therese, & Albert. Together, all the characters portray a vision where the traditional conception of marriage & the nuclear family is missing but also portray a vision where traditional marriage & the nuclear family seem even unnecessary.From this perspective, this 1962 film must have been radical and quite discomforting for the French audiences of that era. True enough, European cinema in general & French cinema in particular has always acknowledged extramarital affairs in a matter of fact sort of way. But in other films, extramarital affairs are portrayed as being very discrete & rather secret, secret even from the marital partner being "betrayed". But extramarital sex & non-marital sex in J&J is just wide open & out there for everyone to see.Gilberte, Jim's live in lover is a case in point. She consistently expresses her love to Jim, tells him that she wants to get married to him & have kids with him. Yet, she seems perfectly OK with Jim running off to Catherine time & again. She just "understands".Albert, the artist who introduced Catherine to J&J also seems to have no problem sharing Catherine sexually with J&J.Therese spends the night with Jules at the beginning of the film & then just dumps both J&J at a café the next day seemingly in search of another tryst. When Therese encounters Jim again late in the film, she relates a sordid but adventurous tale involving several sex partners.The closest thing to a normal nuclear family in this film is Catherine, Jules, & Sabine, but Jules expresses doubts to Jim that Sabine is even really his daughter & after having Sabine, Jules & Catherine sleep in different rooms, & Jules freely admits to Jim that Catherine has had several affairs.Overall, this film seems to make the case that marriage & the nuclear family are superfluous ideas that are mere social conventions. True enough, the characters in this film are artist//writer types, intellectuals who are expected to be offbeat & eccentric to some degree, but, on the other hand, the conventional nuclear family & the conventional idea of a committed heterosexual love are not only missing in this film but we are given the impression that these social conventions are not even necessary.From this perspective, J&J is definitely a radical, ant-Establishment protest film. Although it is set in the past, this film portends a future into which society will evolve.Most prominent in this futuristic vision is the absence of male possessiveness of his female sex partner, that is, the absence of jealousy. This can be most clearly seen between J&J themselves as they both "share" Catherine to varying degrees. But female jealousy is also absent in this film too. The total lack of a stable family structure & the lack of jealousy by both sexes portrays an almost anarchist reality where love & sex & having children is a joyful free-for-all.The wild card in this anarchist sexual utopia is Catherine. In my opinion, the character Catherine is a mentally unstable, if not a downright mentally ill person. She definitely displays symptoms of erotomania & psychopathy. The degree that she craves new sexual partners is just not normal, even by anarchist, "free love" standards. Moreover, she is a psychopath that craves to manipulate others, especially men. The "magnetism" that J&J & Albert &, probably all of her other lovers feel toward her is really the slick, covert, manipulative psychopath at work. It is difficult to discern whether she craves sex more than the manipulative power that her sexual allure has over men.This is where the tragic death of Jim enters the picture. At the end, he breaks free of Catherine's psychopathic manipulation & when Catherine realizes that her manipulative power over Jim has disappeared, she attempts to reassert her manipulative power by locking the door of the bedroom & pulling a gun on Jim. You'd think that, at that point, Jim would've finally seen Catherine for the crazy person she is, but by the tragic end of the film he allows Catherine to manipulate him one last time when he gets into a car alone with her, the woman who almost killed him with a gun, & drives away with her to their death. In the end, Catherine did not allow the one man who broke away from her psychopathic manipulation to get away scot free, even if it meant ending her life too.Truly, Catherine deserves a prominent position in the "Cinema Hall Of Fame For Sick Characters".