by Allan Fish
(France 1961 105m) DVD1/2
Aka. Jules and Jim
Vive la Moreau!
p Marcel Berbert d François Truffaut w François Truffaut, Jean Gruault novel Henri-Pierre Roche ph Raoul Coutard ed Claudine Bouche m Georges Delerue art/cos Fred Capel
Jeanne Moreau (Catherine), Oskar Werner (Jules), Henri Serre (Jim), Marie Dubois (Thérèse), Vanna Urbino (Gilberte), Sabine Haudepin (Sabine), Kate Noelle (Birgitta), Christianne Wagner (Helga), Anny Nielsen (Lucy), Boris Bassiak (Albert),
It just so happens that I review Truffaut’s delicious turn of the century romance on the very same day as Ophuls’ Lola Montes. Intriguing in that they share several things in common; liberating use of the widescreen, a camera in love with the idea of femininity, a capricious woman who lead men to their doom, and the presence of the unique Oskar Werner. It’s also a film that both reinvents and pays homage to the very sort of film that Truffaut and his contemporaries looked down upon, most memorably Renoir’s Une Partie de Campagne, to which this is most definitely a cinematic offspring.
In Paris in 1912, two young men, German Jules and Parisian Jim, form an instant friendship, into which comes the beautiful Catherine, with whom they both fall in love. It’s Jules who succeeds with her, marrying her, and returning to Germany where they have a child, Sabine. During the war, the friends are on opposite sides, but after the armistice, Jim, now established as a writer, pays them a visit. There Jules says Catherine is on the point of leaving him, and in a plea to hold onto both of them, asks Jim to sleep with her. However, when she’s unfaithful to both of them, Jim returns dejected to Paris. Many years later, in 1933, Jules and Catherine come to see Jim, who now wants out of this destructive relationship, at which Catherine takes matters into her own hands.
No film before or since has quite so giddily delved into the mysterious, murky waters (literally in the finale) of obsessive love and the concept of friendship. Both friends know deep down that Catherine isn’t really right for them but they are intoxicated anyway. She’s like their ideal statue come to life, and they want her in their lives at all costs. “She’s an apparition, not a woman for one man” Jim tells the smitten Jules, knowing fine well that his advice is useless. Catherine truly is one of the most problematic women in movie history, and she could easily have become very irritable in the wrong hands. It is, of course, purely down to the divine Jeanne Moreau that she is anything but. Moreau had appeared briefly as a favour in Truffaut’s debut Les Quatre Cents Coups, but she had already become a French cine-icon thanks to her femme fatale in Touchez pas au Grisbi, her decorously naked princess in La Reine Margot and her illicit wife in Malle’s legendary Les Amants. However, before or since, she has never had a role like Roche’s heroine. Capricious, yet vulnerable. Selfish, yet giving. Enchanting, yet disturbed. She fits the role like a tailor made opera glove, her energy perfectly captured in that immortal sprint over the bridge, with her fake moustache, chequered cap and very baggy pants and jumper, and her legendary rendition of ‘Le Tourbillon’ by the piano. If any role confirmed her as one of the half dozen greatest actresses in the history of the cinema, this is it. Yet one cannot overlook the performances of her co-stars; Serre is almost forgotten aside from this role, but Werner was rarely better, filling Jules with a true bohemian sense of a foreigner intoxicated by love and Paris. When he is left alone at the end of the film, we see him wander away from the cemetery knowing that, in spite of the remaining daughter (the lovely Haudepin), he’s about to face a very uncertain future. And though its story may not be nouvelle vague material, Truffaut invests it with all the energy and vitality associated with the movement he so embodied. Helped immeasurably by Coutard’s gorgeous photography and the unforgettable music of Delerue, he creates the ultimate picture of cinematic ménage à trois. “The men’s friendship had no equal in love” the narrator observes, and nor indeed does Truffaut’s film in cine-history.
Allan, “I believe Jules et Jim” was one of the first films, if not the first, to use the freeze frame as a creative tool. Catherine was a woman way ahead of her time, smart and sexually independent, as portrayed by Moreau, who has to be one of the most sensuous, and talented, actresses of our time.
Have you seen Paul Mazursky’s homage to Truffaut’s classic, “Willie and Phil”, mediocre to say the least. As opposed to the three characters in “Jules et Jim”, I could never warm up to the three in Mazursky’s film they always seemed artificial. Margot Kidder, though beautiful is no Moreau.
Indeed, the freeze frame was an unforgettable device here, as the final shot on the beach was one of the most arresting in the history of cinema.
This will probably win me no respect in this bright corner of the web, but I confess that this film’s magic has never quite engaged me. While the performances are riveting and the central premise is liberating I find much of the plot alternately tedious and contrived, especially the denouement. Then again, I had much of the same experience watching Godard’s “Breathless” for the first time, so there’s the distinct chance that as a child of the hyper-kinetic 90s I have been somehow sadly “desensitized” to French Nouvelle Vague cinema (indeed, I would probably take Rohmer’s bookishness over the antics of Truffaut or Godard any day of the week, I am a trifle ashamed to admit). But I cannot dispute the film’s influence, or its impact. Brazilian musicians Milton Nascimento and Lo Borges were inspired to form the incredible pop group Clube de Esquina after watching “Jules et Jim” — for that I am ever thankful.
Another accomplished review by Allan, and a fascinating connection to “Lola Montes”. That’s a rather Thomsonian fourth wall break in your text, wouldn’t you say? 😉
Just a tad, Jon, just a tad. I’m still wondering how Sam saw Jules et Jim with a beach final shot. Another of his blind pole vaulter senile moments, grabbing the wrong end of the stick. That’s Les Quatre Cents Coups, you old fool, Jules ends in a graveyard if memory serves.
I concede that I have officially lost it.
I enjoyed the review, Allan, thanks.
Jon, I wouldn’t feel too bad about not getting. It might not be you. This is my comment from the review for ‘Les Quatre Cents Coups.’ (February 25, 2009)
“Personally, I found the film to have minor but worthwhile virtues, which, coming at the tail-end of what was considered an overly elborate and emblamed ’50s French Cinema tradition -was a breath of fresh air, taking the camera onto the streets and out of the studios to show the city – the way the Americans had a decade earlier and which had already been done to beguiling effect in ‘The Red Balloon’.”
There are Films for the Ages and there are films that were important in their time and don’t weather too well but work if understood as influential for an era. Film students, historians and critics appreciate these the most. The nouvelle vague were critics, cinephiles intoxicated bt feverish private film showings, watching Abel Gance’s ‘Napolean’ and Welles’ ‘Citizen Kane’ and ‘The Magnificent Ambersons’ and their ilk. Hence the tricks and the hand-held camera-work. Hollywood veterans such as Wyler, Wilder, ect, ect – who’d seen it all before, done by masters the first time around saw what was happening and were scathingly dismissive.
It doesn’t mean that they connect or will connect with future audiences. I enjoy good, eloquent use of film grammer – but many of these come across as try-hard, and inept. As if the techiques and the ideas, here from a novel will over-come poor narrative. This is the type of film that will enthuse a Scorcese, who comes across as a super film professor. Rather like a film lecturer I had once.
With the advent of the computer, video, dvd and blu-ray – almost everything is now available, the whole history from 1895 to the present to watch. So, many of the innovations don’t look so innovative. Something that must have thrilled the critics of the day, who had to travel great distances to get a rare showing, won’t go down so well with the modern viewer.
And with so many of modern films from going for the immediacy of the hand-held shot instead of compostional pictorial beauty, the nouvelle vague looked frayed.
As for freeze frames, there is ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’ and before that that, I believe, ‘The Road to Utopia’. And probably some smart alec, who’d done it before.
The comments on Allan’s evocative rendering seem to me to focus too much on the mechanics and not the gestalt. Any film as a work of art stands in the final analysis strictly on its own terms. I think perhaps deconstruction is the worst homage to a film and its creators. Pity I can’t go back to being a naive 20-yo swept-up in the sheer emotional beauty of this film…
Vive La Fish! … Vive La Truffaut!
Qu’est-ce qu’un examen très intéressante d’un film, je n’ai jamais vu avant, mais j’ai l’intention de chercher à regarder, mais bien sûr!
Je vous remercie,
Monsieur Allan Poisson,
Deedee 😉
Hi there,
Interesting, I`ll quote it on my site later.
Hey Jinny!
Dee Dee is our resident French expert! I am still trying to decipher it, even with my consumate love of French cinema.
Tony d’Ambra is right. I never loved this film as much as I did when I first saw it at age 21. It was truly an epiphany, without overusing the word.
C’mon Allan!!!!!
Dee Dee just said “Vive la Fish” and it will soon be part of what goes up at Jinny’s site!!
Hi! Sam Juliano,
Here goes the translation….
Vive la Fish!… Vive la Truffaut! ….
What a very interesting review of a film, I’ve never seen before, but I intend to try to watch, but of course!
Thank you, Monsieur Allan Fish,
Deedee 😉
I’ll chime in with Jon here. Though I own Jules et Jim, and love that opening montage, I’ve never fully succumbed to its “magic.” There have been times when the beginning seemed to evoke a wonderful turn-of-the century world (and a free-spirited cinema of the mind as well) and when the middle passage struck me with its romance and poignance, capturing a sort of wilted melancholy post-World War I mood. But the film in its totality has never really held me start to finish, and whatever enjoyment I’ve gleaned from it has always been outpaced with the mountains of praise heaped on the movie.
Indeed, Truffaut puts me in an odd position. I think I “get” his appeal, based on the his acclaim, tributes paid (in prose and on celluloid) to his romantic, melancholy mood. And yet this appeal always appears evasive when I’m actually sitting down to watch one of his movies. I like The 400 Blows probably more than this, but even that – on the wrong occasion – can leave me somewhat cold and even when I’m engaged by it, it doesn’t really seem to me a masterpiece. I wonder why.
Anyway, Godard, who is supposed to be Truffaut’s colder, more distanced peer immediately grabs me and I have a far more passionate involvement in his movies. Though, ironically, his Breathless also left me cold when I first saw it (it’s grown on me since but is still not one of my favorite Godards). That’s where Jon and I part company, though, because as a 90s child I still love the New Wave and still find it bold and arresting. Just not so much Truffaut.
C’est la vie.
Sam, Jinny is SPAM… and the link is not family-friendly.
Also, I don’t think it’s fair to say that Truffaut looked down upon Renoir – the cinema he and his peers rejected belonged to the postwar era, rather than the thirties. Indeed, Renoir was held up as a model of what the New Wavers could be, a patronage that was recognized by – among others – Pauline Kael in her celebrations of Breathless and Jules et Jim. Though they claimed to despise Clouzot and Carne (albeit with Truffaut apologizing to Carne years later, saying “I would trade all of my films to have made ‘Les enfants du paradis'”) they adored Cocteau, Bresson, and perhaps especially Renoir.
Sam Juliano said,”Dee Dee just said “Vive la Fish” and it will soon be part of what goes up at Jinny’s site!!”
Ha!ha! LOL!!!!
Sam Juliano, I’am so embarrassed because the readers of her blog, is going to read that I wrote Vive la Truffaut!
….Oops! …What I meant to say is…Vive la Truffaut’s artistic work on film! I guess saying, Vive la Truffaut, is okay if I ‘am thinking of his “spirit” no, but of course!
Deedee 😉
Great observations, Movieman, and you’ve inspired me to give “Breathless” another shot someday. And I must revise my original statement: I find many French New Wave films piquant and nearly alarmingly entertaining (“Shoot the Piano Player” comes to mind). However, I must also admit many of the stereotypical characteristics of the FNW grammar — jump cuts, pop culture fixation, pseudo-noir scenarios, plotless plots — bore the hell out of me (you can also probably tell from the manner in which I identify these attributes, too, that I’m singling out “Breathless” again…but it’s tough not to).
That having been said, I do love Godard’s “Masculin Feminin,” also “Alphaville”…heck, I even liked “A Woman is a Woman,” which a lot of people abhor. None of those would quite top my list of favorite films, however. I also look forward to seeing “2 or 3 Things I Know About Her” and “Made in USA,” which Criterion is pumping out in July (I admit I probably have not seen enough Godard to form a proper opinion, which may also be part of the issue). And if we expand “French New Wave” to also encompass Rivette, Melville, and Malle, I’m probably much more enamored with it than I let on.
It’s primarily the Wave’s two most prominent enfants terribles that I’m quite conflicted over, and I hypothesize that my disdain is due to the duo’s strong influence on (and my rejection of) American crap culture (which, of course, had originally influenced them, and so the whole affair is quite cyclical — shit begatting art begatting shit begatting…).
Hi! Tony,
Right you are!….
Tony said,” Sam, Jinny is SPAM… and the link is not family-friendly.”
Now…it’s “scary” hmmm…it seems to me after perusing her blog….hmmm…it’s basically Yahoo and Google news and not so family-friendly links on her blog roll.
This isn’t to say it’s Spam, but of course not!….It appears as if “she”( I’am not sure what is generating that blog?!?….) 😕 has more than not so family-friendly “offering” too!
It appears to be a Spanish blog ??? 😕
(or for Spanish-speaking people)
(Shrug shoulders) 😕
A very ” embarrassed” Deedee….
Ha!ha! 😆
It’s hard for me to hold the New Wave responsible for current crap culture, given how far current crap culture has strayed from that particular source. I would probably hold Warhol and his crap-is-art-and-art-is-crap milieu more responsible, if we’re looking to pin the blame on high-art progenitors.
At any rate, I have a distaste for postmodernism and a love of modernism but how I parse the terms might be a tad self-interested (if I like it, I tend to see it as the latter). As I see it, modernism is a snapshot of cultural dissolution, a dying of belief and idealism and tradition which contains the force of a supernova. Pomo is little more than postmortem spasms – the involuntary reflexes of a corpse. If we want art to ascend to the heights of modernism again (and I think we should), we will have to reinvent culture and reinvest it with meaning. Oddly enough, I think it can be done but that’s fodder for a lengthier dissertation.
As you might have gathered, at any rate, I consider Godard the last of the modernists rather than the first of the postmodernists.
MovieMan, agreed on modernism/post-modernism (the very lack of originality in the era’s name suggests that we have a problem). But…
It’s hard for me to hold the New Wave responsible for current crap culture, given how far current crap culture has strayed from that particular source.
Responsibility and influence are two very different things. I’m thinking, however, specifically of film here, and the whole Tarantino aesthetic (with its many adherents) — very much a Godardian school, in some ways — in the worst ways, I would argue — although clearly there are distinctions.
And while you’re right about Warhol, even he would be sick of his own aphorisms by now, surely.
As an antidote to the less than sympathetic critiques here , I offer this graceful meditation on Jules et Jim from French critic, Jean-Michel Frodon, which mirrors my feelings for the film so closely that I have fallen in love with Jeanne Moreau allover again.
“She wore rings on every finger. She sang the song. She wore a mustache and a thug cap, and she loved two men—one French, the other German—as the war was coming. She would love many more men, before, after, and during that time, and bicycles were running fast on the curved roads of happiness. In the end there was death. Mr. Jules (Oskar Werner) and Mr. Jim (Henri Serre) opened the door to the magical summer of cinema’s modernity, but they came from the summer of another modernity, one that occurred way back at the beginning of the 20th century—when Henri-Pierre Roche lived this story and then wrote it as a diary. They opened the door, and Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) ran right through it, shining with grace and strength and faith in being human. She would win all the races on the bridge—even the one where the bridge ends in the middle. It would be a tragedy, but it was shown as slapstick.
Never see Jules and Jim in a dubbed version, Francois Truffaut’s voice-over is the sound of a wind that caresses and makes one world disappear, another world appear. The beauty of the black-and-white Cinemascope is hardly large enough, delicate and nuanced enough, rooted in the origin and contemporary enough, contrasted enough to convey the vivid and subtle energy the film is made out of. Look at Moreau! Look how beautiful she is! Truffaut was in love with her (how could he not be?), Jules et Jim was created from this love—it would have been impossible to make this movie without the obvious happiness of the director filming his actress, the strength they gave to each other. A shadow of sadness can be felt each time she leaves the frame, a thrill of joy and desire each time she enters it again.
Cinema is the art of recording, not only the recording of objects but also visual forms and sounds. It is also the recording of that distorted reality produced by powerful emotions. Jules et Jim records just such a distorted reality, to an extraordinary extent. War was to come, as was delusion, and death. The film knew it, its black and white were also the colors of mourning. It was also Truffaut’s third film, still made in the original impulse of the New Wave. And yet, after the autobiographical and child-centered The 400 Blows (1959) and the avant-garde, virtuoso game of Shoot the Piano Player (1960), Jules et Jim signaled a more adult and middle-of-the-road effort without losing any of the young and disruptive energy of the revolution he and his accomplices had just launched in world cinema. And, at least during this brief moment, that is exactly what happened. Truffaut’s third film kept alive a moment of turbulence that would never come again—a jump into the future, with love.”
Thanks, Tony – wonderful words, which make me want to love the movie more than I do! As I said, I “get” Truffaut more when I’m not watching him than when I do. Why this is I just don’t know.
Do you own the English-translated Cahiers du cinema anthologies (I don’t think this Frodon passage comes from that, but it reminded me of them nonetheless)? I read them cover-to-cover in a bookstore years ago, and recently purchased the 50s and 60s volumes, planning to read them again.
To read the Cahiers articles, years after they’ve been canonized by American academics, is to be startled by the mystical rapture (and more than occasional mystification) indulged in by these film fanatics. Indeed, it’s almost as if their free-spirited, erudite yet hardly rigorous cinema celebrations skipped several generations, circumventing the institutionalization of film theory and scrupulous analysis of university types, finding its home in…dare I say it? The blogosphere (though mostly that spirit still exists as potential and occasional suggestion rather than fact – or at any rate, may be more embodied in comment sections than articles proper).
Sorry Movie Man I should have given the reference – the piece was written for Schneider’s 1001 Movies… (Burlington 2003).
I have (but not read much of) the anthology ‘The Early Film Criticism of Francois Truffaut’ (Indiana University Press 1993), which annotates his early Cahiers’ articles. I saw several volumes of the full anthologies in a used bookshop last week, but I was feeling stingy (and already have a stack of film books I have yet to open) – though I did buy, Geoff Andrews’ directors reference ‘The Film Handbook’ (Longmans ,1988) and Clarke’s anthology ‘The Cinematic City’ (Routledge, 1997).
I find Truffaut’s writing style fractured, – perhaps in translation something is lost – and indulgent, but still strikingly off-beat (though I have focused on the b-movies and noirs).
Having never studied film, I find film theorists very hard to understand, and yes the blogosphere is impressionistic rather than analytical.
Tony, you’re not missing a thing, having not studied film. Film theory was largely boring. Apart from the Soviet silents. The best thing about it, the most revealing was the study of primitive cinema (1895-1915) and seeing film grammer curl out, unfurling itself and breathing deeply. Oh, and watching a beautiful print of ‘Black Narcissus’ being projected.
Love the way the review you posted, though I disagree with.
LOL Bobby!
You have all just seen Tony d’Ambra at his most spectacular in his discussion here of JULES AND JIM, (as well as Movie Man’s stellar contributions) This is why blogging can be so enriching and satisfying. Discussions like this are what movie mans live for.
Having said that I have noticed a ‘chemistry’ between Tony and Movie Man, which can be seen at other sites, not the least of which is FilmsNoir.net and The Dancing Image………Great great stuff here!!!!!
OK, I just read Jon Lanthier’s contributions here too! Fantastic!
This has been one of our greatest threads ever, and i am sorry Allan hasn’t been here, or has been busy. This one really deserves maximum involvement.
Bobby J, I find film theory to be compelling when it’s fresh (and coupled with a Cahiers-like love of cinema) – for example, in an old book that my dad bought in the 70s; whereas perusing a more recent film theory book, where everything has been codified and institutionalized, shows how tepid and uninteresting the field has become. No matter how dense the passages in the older book (and there are some ridiculously dense ones) there’s always something alive and excited about it – and I just don’t see that feeling as much anymore.
I think those who’ve participated in this blog debate will find the following link to a terrific BBC online Radio broadcast fascinating. It pretty much sums up my outlook on the ‘new wave’….
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00jnm3f
enjoy…..
Bobby: When I wasn’t going senile, I think I participated, so i will be checking this out later after I complete a theater review I am engaged in.
Thanks so very much for this! Looks great.
Just watched this again this past weekend (partially because a friend just watched it for the first time and wanted my thoughts, and I’d just caught Truffaut’s other film with Jeanne Moreau ‘The Bride Wore Black’ the weekend before on the big screen). Since this was posted right before I began following WitD (I recall ‘Pierrot le Fou’ in the 60’s as being my first film more or less that was highlighted), I figured I’d read through Allan’s essay (great as usual, you can really tell you love this film) and the comment thread.
Though I’m no Truffaut admirer, I do like this film, and adore his previous ‘Shoot the Piano Player’. I’d like to thank Tony for the passage… I like it quite a bit and it is more or less why I like the film too, it’s about the trouble beauty has living in our world. Something Dostoevsky wrote so well about, and the Manic’s sung so well about in the tune ‘She is Suffering’. Beautiful.
Seeing the thread bumped by Jamie’s comments, I wanted to return I say I finished the 1001 book Tony highlights. I find much of the prose a bit tepid with two major exceptions: Jonathan Rosenbaum, and Frodon, who Tony highlights. Frodon’s pieces are the highlights of the book – rich, evocative, fun, allusive and elusive all at once, exactly what this sort of short-form film writing should be (imo). The J+J passage is a a great example.