`Jules and Jim' a Jewel

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.

To the observant viewer, however, it is obvious from the very beginning of "Jules and Jim" that something is amiss. Before the credits, while the screen is dark, Moreau's voice pronounces these words: "You said to me: I love you. I said to you: wait. I was going to say: take me. You said to me: go away." The mystery, the enigmatic, vaguely ominous prosaicness of Moreau's words spoken in darkness, undermines the brightness to come.

After the war, Jim travels to Germany to visit Catherine and Jules, who have a young daughter named Sabine. When the threesome meet again, they all comment that nothing and none of them has changed. There is a bitter pang as Truffaut undercuts their statement Everything has changed; Jules no longer smokes and has taken to entomology, Jim has shorn his moustache and seems older, Catherine wears glasses and appears less radiant. Jules informs Jim that things are not going well, that he has not been able to hold Catherine, and that Catherine has run away several times. Jules is determined not to lose Catherine, and so he encourages Jim's interest in her. Even if she becomes Jim's lover, she will still be around, and Jules is content with Catherine's mere presence.

This initiates a complex series of musical beds, betrayals and farewells, all set in the idyllic countryside along the Rhine where Jules and Catherine live. This menage a trois is what set the Legion of Decency's teeth on edge, but it is easy to see the appeal of the world-weary romanticism that the film depicts. Trufaut's movie has been tremendously influential, and all sorts of directors have taken inspiration from it. There is a lovely scene where the party goes bicycle riding, and which Philip Kaufman later took up in "Henry and June." Anyone who has seen Jane Campion's "The Piano" will experience the shock of recognition when Truffaut shows a scene of Jules cutting wood outside his chalet and giving it to Sabine to carry in her arms while Jim and Catherine make love upstairs.

Jeanne Moreau is the complex, disturbing center of the film, and her performace is such that it is difficult to know what to make of Catherine. When Jim tells Catherine that he understands her, she replies, "I do not want to be understood." All the men in the film spend their time trying to understand or define her, but it is precisely what she is trying to avoid, and they are never very successful.

Albert, who becomes Catherine's lover while Jim is visiting Jules and Catherine, writes her a song which discusses her "visage de femme fatale qui m'fut fatale," the face of a femme fatale who was fatal to him. And Albert is the one who describes the statue which Catherine resembles, "the lips are very beautiful...a little disdainful. The eyes are very fine too." Jules says that Catherine is "neither particularly beautiful, nor intelligent, nor sincere, but she is a real woman...and she is a woman we love...and whom all men desire."

Jules' definition might be the closest one to the truth, but it is still not easy to define Moreau's appeal. A lot of it has to do with her unique voice, husky, slightly raspy, but nevertheless smooth, like honey shot through with smoke. To hear that voice speaking French is something of a revelation. Even in claptrap like "La Femme Nikita," her distinctive voice elevated the pedestrian dialogue about a woman's beauty to the realm of poetry. Her voice cracks words open to reveal their intrinsic poetry and beauty, and when she sings, she is dangerously enchanging. Is it any wonder that Jim, Jules and Albert find her irresistible?

The devastating twist that makes the ending is a surprise, and nevertheless absolutely logical. One feels slightly battered, and yet exhilarated, and ultimately filled with a sweet melancholy. The film's pleasures are practically inexhaustible. There is Marie Dubois as Therese, the chain-smoking philandering, cocotte. There is Georges Delerue's haunting, evocative music. There is the carefree relationship between Jules and Jim, which is made possible by Werner's and Serre's terrific performances. And when all else and, there is Jeanne Moreau's voice. At one point, the film's narrator tells the audience that "the month that [Catherine and Jim] spent together was graven in their memories by a multitude of small but perfect details.' There could not be a more apt description of the two hours that one spends with "Jules and Jim".