Jules and Jim

For the band named Jules et Jim, see Jules et Jim (band).
Jules and Jim

original film poster © Christian Broutin
Directed by François Truffaut
Produced by Marcel Berbert
François Truffaut
Screenplay by François Truffaut
Jean Gruault
Based on Jules et Jim by Henri-Pierre Roché
Starring Jeanne Moreau
Oskar Werner
Henri Serre
Narrated by Michel Subor
Music by Georges Delerue
Serge Rezvani as Boris Bassiak (song: Le Tourbillon)
Cinematography Raoul Coutard
Edited by Claudine Bouché
Production
company
Les Films du Carrosse/ SEDIF
Distributed by Cinédis
Gala
Janus Films
Release dates
  • January 23, 1962 (1962-01-23)
Running time
 105 minutes
Country France
Language French
Box office 1,595,379 admissions (France)[1]

Jules and Jim (French: Jules et Jim, IPA: [ʒyl e dʒim]) is a 1962 French romantic drama film, directed, produced and written by François Truffaut. Set around the time of World War I, it describes a tragic love triangle involving French Bohemian Jim (Henri Serre), his shy Austrian friend Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jules' girlfriend and later wife Catherine (Jeanne Moreau).

The film is based on Henri-Pierre Roché's 1953 semi-autobiographical novel describing his relationship with young writer Franz Hessel and Helen Grund, whom Hessel married.[2] Truffaut came across the book in the mid-1950s whilst browsing through some secondhand books at a bookseller along the Seine in Paris. Later he befriended the elderly Roché, who had published his first novel at the age of 74. The author approved of the young director's interest to adapt his work to another medium.

The film won the 1962 Grand Prix of the French film price Étoile de Cristal and Jeanne Moreau won that year's prize for best actress. The film ranked 46 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010.[3] The soundtrack by Georges Delerue was named as one of the "10 best soundtracks" by Time magazine in its "All Time 100 Movies" list.[4] Professor Stephen Hawking has called it his "favorite movie of all time".[5] The shooting of the movie was the subject of a documentary directed in 2009 by Thierry Tripod.[6]

Plot

The film is set before, during and after the Great War in several different parts of France, Austria, and Germany. Jules (Oskar Werner) is a shy writer from Austria who forges a friendship with the more extroverted Frenchman Jim (Henri Serre). They share an interest in the world of the arts and the Bohemian lifestyle. At a slide show, they become entranced with a bust of a goddess and her serene smile, and travel to see the ancient statue on an island in the Adriatic Sea.

After encounters with several women, they meet the free-spirited, capricious Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), a doppelgänger for the statue with the serene smile. The three hang out together. Although she begins a relationship with Jules, both men are affected by her presence and her attitude toward life. Jim continues to be involved with Gilberte, usually seeing her apart from the others. A few days before war is declared, Jules and Catherine move to Austria to get married. Both men serve during the war, on the opposing sides; each fears throughout the conflict the potential for facing the other or learning that he might have killed his friend.

After the wartime separation, Jim visits, and later stays with, Jules and Catherine in their house in the Black Forest. Jules and Catherine by then have a young daughter, Sabine. Jules confides the tensions in their marriage. He tells Jim that Catherine torments and punishes him at times with numerous affairs, and she once left him and Sabine for six months.

She flirts with and attempts to seduce Jim, who has never forgotten her. Jules, desperate that Catherine might leave him forever, gives his blessing for Jim to marry Catherine so that he may continue to visit them and see her. For a while, the three adults live happily with Sabine in the same chalet in Austria, until tensions between Jim and Catherine arise because of their inability to have a child.

Jim leaves Catherine and returns to Paris. After several exchanges of letters between Catherine and Jim, they resolve to reunite when she learns that she is pregnant. The reunion does not occur after Jules writes to tell Jim that Catherine suffered a miscarriage.

After a time, Jim runs into Jules in Paris. He learns that Jules and Catherine have returned to France. Catherine tries to win Jim back, but he rebuffs her, saying he is going to marry Gilberte. Furious, she pulls a gun on him, but he wrestles it away and flees. He later encounters Jules and Catherine in a famous (at that time) movie theater, the Studio des Ursulines.

The three of them stop at an outdoor cafe. Catherine asks Jim to get into her car, saying she has something to tell him. She asks Jules to watch them and drives the car off a damaged bridge into the river, killing herself and Jim. Jules is left to deal with the ashes of his friends.[7]

Cast

Style

One of the seminal products of the French New Wave (Nouvelle Vague), Jules and Jim is an inventive encyclopedia of the language of cinema: Truffaut incorporated newsreel footage, photographic stills, freeze frames, panning shots, wipes, masking, dolly shots, and voiceover narration (by Michel Subor). Truffaut's cinematographer was Raoul Coutard, a frequent collaborator with Jean-Luc Godard, who employed the latest lightweight cameras to create an extremely fluid film style. For example, some of the postwar scenes were shot using cameras mounted on bicycles.

The evocative musical score is by Georges Delerue. One song, "Le Tourbillon" ("The Whirlwind") by Serge Rezvani, which sums up the turbulence of the lives of the three main characters, became a popular hit.

The dialogue is predominantly in French, with occasional lines in German and one line in English.

Jeanne Moreau incarnates the style of the French New Wave actress. The critic Ginette Vincindeau has defined this as, "beautiful, but in a kind of natural way; sexy, but intellectual at the same time, a kind of cerebral sexuality, — this was the hallmark of the nouvelle vague woman." Though she isn't in the film's title, Catherine is "the structuring absence. She reconciles two completely opposed ideas of femininity".[9]

Influence

In film

In music

In television

See also

Further reading

References

  1. ↑ Box Office information for Francois Truffaut films at Box Office Story
  2. ↑ "Stéphane Hessel, un homme engagé : 'J’ai toujours été du côté des dissidents'" Télérama (March 12, 2011). Retrieved March 17, 2011 (French)
  3. ↑ "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema – 46. Jules and Jim". Empire.
  4. ↑ Jules et Jim
  5. ↑ "Science AMA Series: Stephen Hawking AMA Answers!".
  6. ↑ Presentation of the documentary about the shooting of Jules and Jim on Eurochannel
  7. ↑ Fry, Nicholas (translator). Truffaut, François and Gruault, Jean (script). Jules and Jim, a film by François Truffaut. New York: Simon and Schuster. 1968. 68-27592. pp. 11-100.
  8. ↑ Allen, Don. Finally Truffaut. New York: Beaufort Books. 1985. ISBN 0-8253-0335-4. OCLC 12613514. pp. 225-226.
  9. ↑ Ginette Vincindeau, speaking on an edition of BBC Radio 3's Nightwaves series, hosted by Philip Dodd, March 2009.
  10. ↑ "50 (useless but) genius facts about Goodfellas". Shortlist. Retrieved 23 August 2012.

External links

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