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DVD Jules and Jim - Criterion Collection
François Truffaut's third feature, though it's named for the two best friends who become virtually inseparable in pre-World War I Paris, is centered on Jeanne Moreau's Catherine, the most mysterious, enigmatic woman in his career-long gallery of rich female portraits. Adapted from the novel by Henri-Pierre Roché, Truffaut's picture explores the 30-year friendship between Austrian biologist Jules (Oskar Werner) and Parisian writer Jim (Henri Serre) and the love triangle formed when the alluring Catherine makes the duo a trio. Spontaneous and lively, a woman of intense but dynamic emotions, she becomes the axle on which their friendship turns as Jules woos her and they marry, only to find that no one man can hold her. Directed in bursts of concentrated scenes interspersed with montage sequences and pulled together by the commentary of an omniscient narrator, Truffaut layers his tragic drama with a wealth of detail. He draws on his bag of New Wave tricks for the carefree days of youth--zooms, flash cuts, freeze frames--that disappear as the marriage disintegrates during the gloom of the postwar years. Werner is excellent as Jules, a vibrant young man whose slow, melancholy slide into emotional compromise is charted in his increasingly sad eyes and resigned face, while Serre plays Jim as more of an enigma, guarded and introspective. But both are eclipsed in the glare of Moreau's radiant Catherine: impulsive, demanding, sensual, passionate, destructive, and ultimately unknowable. A masterpiece of the French New Wave and one of Truffaut's most confident and accomplished films. --Sean Axmaker
Review(s): DVD Jules and Jim - Criterion Collection
Everybody loves Catherine, especially Truffaut
Set around the time of the First World War, Jules, an Austrian, and Jim, a Frenchman, are best friends. One day they meet a woman (Catherine) who has the same haunting smile of a statue that intrigued them once. Both fall in love with her. She is unpredictable, dangerous, a joy to be with, a life enhancer - and Jules marries her. Then WW I breaks out and Jules and Jim are on opposite sides, but are still friends.
After the war, Jim visits them, but something has changed; Catherine has been unfaithful and Jules is afraid of losing her for good. He encourages Jim to become her lover (almost as a token of friendship), but after a while Jim and Catherine fall in love, want to marry, and have children. But before any of that can happen Catherine gets restless again and dallies. Jim leaves her and she falls apart. On a picnic she gets Jim in a car and drives off a bridge with him. Left is poor Jules, who has been the good dog the whole movie (by the end of the movie he looks and acts like a ragged, wet dishrag).
Truffaut's camera work is as alive and vigorous as this trio of actors when they are on screen together; the music is perfect, too, especially the snappy love song sung by Catherine. It's an insightful (and humorous/sad/poignant) movie about a woman striving for "independence" but never coming close to handling it, and the two men who love her and their friendship that lasts through it all. A brilliant achievement; Truffaut's masterpiece.
Jules and Jim (1962) - Francois Truffaut
Jules and Jim is an imprenetrably emotional film full of superficial characters and a plot that never stops to take a breath, but this could possibly be everything erratic director Francois Truffaut intended. Despite some pleasent performances, nice cinematography, inventive editing and camera movement, the film just never comes together. It's incredibly fast moving story unfolds in such a jerky fashion it's hardly enjoyable. The film can be seen as either a reality based love triangle, or a fairy tale, but either way you look at it, it doesn't work. It's the type of film you see because of it's reputation, and sparse innovation, other than that, Jules and Jim is an irregular mess that's easily forgettable.
Representing relationships...
Jules and Jim takes its rightful place alongside the Antoine Doinel series as Truffaut's definitive contribution to the cultural dialogue about love and relationships. With deft psychological insight and an epic narrative perspective, Jules and Jim documents the whims and passions of its characters while letting the long drama and trajectory of life voluptuously fill the space of the film.
Racing through the streets of Paris, tumbling in a meadow in the hills, or a treasure hunt on the beach... these sequences become idylls of light and happy loving, untempered by the concerns of settlement and security. They are siren songs for the fleeting heart and ponderous curiousities for the safe and settled soul. Each character presents an original and challenging perspective on the ethics of love, questioning and reckoning with the cultural conventions that persist through to this day.
The film can be viewed as both a sustained poem of love, a sociological reflection on relationships, a celebration of decadence and indulgence, and a cautionary moral tale. Gratefully, the recent Criterion release will bring the movie to the attention of a new audience, and help to remind those who have seen it previously of the movie's continued relevance.
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