Jules and Jim

Directed by Francois Truffaut

Starring Jeanne Moreau,

Oscar Werner and Henri Serre

at the Harvard Film Archive

March 22

Even more than 30 years after its release, Francois Truffaut's "Jules and Jim" still has the force of a bomb of light going off in the audience's head. When Truffaut's film premiered in the United States in 1962, it was banned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, making it a sin for any Catholic to go see it. However, moral considerations are no longer what make "Jules and Jim" so powerful. Instead, Truffaut's unquestionable artistry, the nakedness of the emotions his camera captured, the outstanding performances by the three leads, and the air of melancholy wisdom about life combine to make a viewing of "Jules and Jim" a joyous, painful and exhilarating artistic experience.

Adapted from Henri-Pierre Roche's novel, the film begins in 1912, with the meeting of Jules and Jim. As the voice-over narration recounts, Jules (Oskar Werner), an Austrian newly arrived in Paris, meets Jim (Henri Serre), a Frenchman, and the two young bohemians become fast friends. Their friendship appears to be perfect. According to the narrator, "they talked into the early hours of the morning, each teaching the other his own language and literature...showed each other poems and translated them together...shared a relative indifference towards money and...chatted easily, each finding in the other the best listener of his life."

The narrative economy with which Truffaut establishes Jules and Jim's friendship leaves one breathless. Using jump cutting and dizzying montage, Truffaut conveys the excitement of a newfound friendship, paralleling the excitement the excitement of falling in love. Though they have women in their lives, Jules and Jim spend most of their time together, giving their friendship homoerotic overtones. Jim, an author, writes an autobiographical novel based on his friendship with Jules, and reads a passage to Jules which says, "They came to be known as Don Quixote and Sancho Panza, and soon, unknown to them, their behavior led to, much rumor and speculation among the people in their neighborhood."

Truffaut ends this introductory section of the film with a curious episode. Jules and Jim visit Albert (Boris Bassiak), an artist friend who shows them a slide of a sculpture of a woman found on an island in the Mediterranean. Inexplicably, Jules and Jim are captivated by the woman's enigmatic face, so much so that they travel to the island to see it in person.

Shortly after, Jules' cousin sends three women friends of his to call on Jules. Jules and Jim have dinner with the women, and among them is one who has the face of the statue. Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) fascinates the two friends even more than the statue. Jules is especially attracted to her and the two become lovers. Catherine soon proves integral to Jules and Jim's relationship.

Jules and Jim have a satisfying, placid friendship, but they love Catherine because she is anything but placid. When they are with her, exciting, spontaneous things happen. Catherine is mercurial, jumping frenziedly from one activity to the next. She goes out with them dressed as a man, and at one point throws herself into the Seine as they are walking home from the theater. For Jules and Jim, Catherine functions as a catalyst; she introduces an element of unpredictability, excitement and danger into their lives.

On a whim, the trio goes to the sea. They rent a house by the beach and spend the summer there. They have a glorious time of it, with a few minor incidents. Catherine is extremely jealous when Jules and Jim don't pay any attention to her because they are so engaged in a game of dominoes. Jim is attracted to Catherine, but he respects Jules so much that he does not take advantage of the fact that Catherine is also attracted to him. As the summer ends, Jules proposes to Catherine, and she accepts.

Here the happy times end, and the film breaks in half. World War I erupts and Jules and Jim fight on opposing sides. Each one's greatest fear is that he will kill the other on the battlefield. Truffaut skillfully mixes archival footage of battles with shots of Jules in the trenches, writing passionate letters in German to Catherine, who is now his wife.

Truffaut makes clear that the war brought to an end the world that Jules, Jim and Catherine knew. All at once, the radiance and airiness of the film's first half make sense. Cinematographer Raoul Coutard's camera captures inhumanly beautiful scenes. The screen is so luminous that at times one is almost blinded by it. Coutard has a feel for the way that summer shirts and the use of a hand-held camera accentuates the kinetic quality of bohemian life. Suddenly, the sunlit beauty of the movie's first section seems elegiac; the world the film portrays is so beautiful precisely because it is about to end.