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JULES ET JIM
Francois Truffaut, France, 1961
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One of François Truffaut's best-loved films starts with the meeting
in 1912 of Jules (Oskar Werner, who worked with Truffaut again in
Fahrenheit 451) and Jim (Henri Serre) and charts their close but pressured
life-long friendship.
The face of an ancient Greek statue transfixes them and the pair vow
to find a woman with the same mysterious smile. When they meet the
flirty and flighty Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), both men fall for her,
but she picks Jules and soon they're married.
World War I finds the men fighting on opposite sides. They are both
worried about killing their best friend on the battlefield. But after
the war, everything changes.
Jim visits his friends in Germany and finds that although they now
have a daughter, their marriage is failing and Catherine has been
unfaithful. Jim wants to stop her running off with someone else, but
he's unsure whether he wants this for his or Jules' sake. When she
makes Jim her next target, Jules asks his best friend to marry her,
so that she can stay in his life.
This is a painfully moving story about uncompromising friendship and
uncontrollable love - not so much unrequited as undeserving and unfulfilled.
Truffaut displays many of his trademark techniques: jump cuts, freeze
frames, narration, and masking off parts of the screen. Also typical
for Truffaut, his characters enjoy the arts, whether its cinema, theatre,
literature or music. Georges Delerue's score fits the mood perfectly,
and stays with you long after the film is over.
Almar Haflidason
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