Review of Jules and Jim (1962) by Devon B — 29 Jan 2010

There is a light and airy quality to Jules and Jim that masquerades the cynical nature of the film. The two title characters, one from Germany the other from France, become friends through an intellectual bond they share.

One day, while watching some slides at a friend's house, they both become enraptured by the smile of an ancient pagan sculpture. When they meet Catherine, they see in her a quality similar to the statue's beauty.

First Jules falls in love with, and then marries her. As WWI breaks out the two friends become separated, only to re-connect afterwards. When Jim comes to their villa in Rhine, he finds his friends married in name only.

He also falls for Catherine, and Jules resolves to make the best of it, so long as he can still remain with both of them. But Catherine is a Queen, as Jules puts it. She must be adored and served, and never ignored.

When she's wronged she takes great pains to "even the score" so that she can once again be on an even playing field with her lover. Jules and Jim are both romantics ever in pursuit of the ideal fantasy of love.

When they finally capture it, it's not what they thought it'd be. Catherine is wild and carefree, and it's these qualities that attracts Jules and Jim, and it's these very qualities that Jim and Jules stifle when they (each) marry her and try to settle her down into domestic servitude.

Stripped of her freedom, she settles for the only pleasure left to her that she finds in living, and that's the constant attention of others. Is it she who is the villain of this story, or is it Jules and Jim? The two men are users and objectifiers of women who don't necessarily see women as actual people, but rather things to own and collect.

That Catherine is neither own-able or tameable is not a sin but a virtue in their eyes, and so everyone seems to get what they really want in the end.