Jules and Jim (1962)

☆ ☆ ☆ ☆ ½

Jules and Jim (1962) – F. Truffaut

The first thing that strikes you about Jules and Jim is the exuberance (joie de vivre?) with which director Francois Truffaut endows the story.  As in his first two films (The 400 Blows, 1959, and Shoot the Piano Player, 1960), Truffaut experiments with film technique, mixing and matching styles in a way that keeps the viewer interested and shows off what Raoul Coutard (cinematographer) could do.  In fact, the first reel, detailing the relationship between best friends Jules and Jim (and the women they loved before they met Catherine) speeds by so fast, with so much cutting between anecdotes, that it is hard to keep up. Part of this may be due to the use of offscreen narration that fleshes out the story and reveals the characters’ inner thoughts and feelings – there are a lot of subtitles to read!  But once Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) meet Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), the film slows a bit to better observe their melodramatic relations across the decades from just before WWI until some years after.  I suppose it comes as no surprise that Truffaut takes the male point of view and treats Catherine and her willful ways as both an object of desire and the cause of suffering; perhaps it is a bit ambivalently sexist but Moreau is nothing if not empowered in the role.  Yet, despite the exuberance, there is a profound melancholy at the core of the film – a yearning for a love that cannot be and perhaps an acknowledgement that it may be difficult for a free spirit to maintain a stable relationship with any one person, let alone two (or three), no matter how strong their passions sometimes are.  Those around them can and do get burned. Ultimately, it isn’t clear whether Truffaut is advocating the sort of compromises that most people make to keep their relationships alive or whether he sides with Catherine’s unfettered approach. Perhaps, as the ending suggests, he knows that some candles burn much too brightly to last.  Fortunately, this jewel of the French New Wave is ours to treasure forever.