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The film that launched a thousand menages: Jules et Jim |
Director: François Truffaut
Cast: Jeanne Moreau (Catherine), Oskar Werner (Jules), Henri
Serre (Jim), Vann Urbino (Gilberte), Boris Bassiak (Albert), Marie Dubois (Thérèse),
Michel Subor (Narrator)
Of all the films of the French New Wave, Jules et Jim was the one that really captured
the global imagination. Its success rode came not only from its embracing of
the new French style, but also from the way it captured some of the mood starting
to build across the world in the 1960s. Truffaut’s third film, it turned its
then 29-year-old director into one of the most renowned directors in the world.
Filmed with verve and imagination, it still holds up brilliantly today as well.
In Paris in the years before the First World War, French
bohemian Jim (Henri Serre) and shy Austrian writer Jules (Oskar Werner) become
best friends. They share everything – the arts, sport and occasionally women –
and the bond between them is unshakeable. When both men meet Catherine (Jeanne
Moreau), a free-spirited, extremely bohemian young woman, they both fall in
love – although the infatuated Jules is the first to admit it. Both men fight
for their countries in the Great War and return to civilian life: Jules marries
Catherine and they have a daughter. But home life cannot keep Catherine bound
down, and a visit to Jim throws the three of them into a curious but warm
menage-a-trois. But can such bliss last forever?
Truffaut’s film is playful, vibrant and overflowing with
style. While other French New Wave films prior to this had focused on sending
the camera out into the streets and capturing the lives of everyday Parisians,
Truffaut’s film mixes this with period trappings. Utilising the dynamic camera
work of his peers, Truffaut throws in carefully selected newsreel footage and still
photography. But all this material is edited with modern forcefulness, Truffaut
using a range of freeze frames, wipes, dolly shots and several other editing
and camera tricks to make this period story feel astonishingly fresh. The film
is fast paced and brilliantly made, and Truffaut’s camera roves like an engaged
but playful observer – a feeling added to by the use of a subtly wry narration.
According to legend, Truffaut found a copy of Henri-Pierre
Roché’s
semi-autobiographical novel in a charity bin and fell hard for the book. It’s a
mark of Truffaut’s ability to judge the time he lived in, that he saw how
clearly this story of bohemian free love in the 1920s would speak so strongly
to the atmosphere of the 1960s. It’s a story that feels more dated today – and
at times it’s hard not to feel a little bit annoyed
by the very knowing, arty, exhibitionism of its characters, and the way they
are very consciously living life as a performance – but it chimed like a bell
back then. And the slight air of artificiality about many of the characters
throughout gives even more of a jar of real emotion when they respond naturally
to tragic and upsetting events.
Truffaut’s film – blessed with a simply sublime score from
Georges Delerue, which captures the tone of the film perfectly – becomes a
brilliant exploration of the freedom and imprisonment that comes from living
your life for every new experience, and never settling. All three of the
characters, to various degrees, refuse to settle for convention but are
constantly striving for a marvellous new experience. Even the character least
affected by these feelings, the more sensitive and weaker Jules, is willing to
adapt and change his life constantly just so he can remain part of this circle
and keep Catherine (with whom he is besotted) in his life.
Ah yes Catherine. Jeanne Moreau gives the sort of
performance here that seems to define an entire generation. Again, today,
Catherine’s constant striving for new experiences and addiction to the buzz of
infatuation comes across at times as (to be honest) selfish. But she is also an
electric figure, overflowing with life and joie-de-vivre. Moreau’s every scene
is breathtakingly eye-catching – and Truffaut recognises this with carefully
timed freeze-frames where the camera seems to soak in her beauty and dynamism
as much as Jules and Jim. Moreau’s performance is truly iconic, like a force of
nature, almost impossible to categorise – she is loving, selfish, brave,
scared, flirtatious, bashful – and impossible to repeat.
It’s also clear why someone as unpredictable and
all-consuming as Catherine gains the ever-lasting devotion of two close
friends. Truffaut brilliantly captures both the hopeless devotion of these two
men to this woman, and also the slight tinge of unspoken sexual bond between
each other. Both men delight early in the film in each other’s permanent
company, of this fact being recognised by all, and write each other poetry and
stories. The film implies the fascination and longing both men have for
Catherine, but also suggests that the strongest, most lasting bond is the one
between the two men. Perhaps it is this that makes them so willing to settling
into their menage – and certainly why, as Catherine’s interest in first one
then the other waxes and wanes, it is each other’s company that they start to
long for.
Of course that doesn’t mean that Jules doesn’t stay devoted
to Catherine, a woman who gives him days of sunshine mixed with weeks of polite
warmth. Oskar Werner is brilliantly sweet, gently naïve and vulnerable as
Jules, filled with wit and tenderness but one of life’s passengers. He’s a man
who follows rather than leads, or moves between the two other people in his
life following the lead of first one or the other. The stronger willed Jim,
played with a hardness and worldly realism by Henri Serre, is the one who both
has the strength of character to hold Catherine longer and the will to turn
away from her (even if for a short time).
The first half of the film is a marvellous explosion of
relaxed joy, of pre-war innocence and youthful exuberance. It’s truly a young
person’s film – and Truffaut’s dynamic
filming, inventive framing and giddy editing really captures this – and the
film progresses much as life does into a middle age still clinging to the
freedom of youth (like Europe attempting to recapture the innocence before the
Great War) before beginning the descent towards the horrors to come of the
1930s. The film’s tragic conclusion has the sadness of a world lost, touched
with the ridiculousness that seems inevitable for its exhibitionist characters.
It makes for a marvellous and breathtakingly giddy ride, that (even if it looks
at time dated in its very 1960s vibe) still carries a great deal of delight,
joy and above all fun. Truffaut’s greatest achievement and most famous film
still makes for a quite a calling card.
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