Review of Jules and Jim (1962) by Jurij V — 19 Jun 2011

Sadly, I've really only seen a couple of French New Wave movies, but this one was the best so far. Seeing this movie back in 1962 must have been astonishing for audiences; it moves quickly and feels alive and raw in a way virtually nothing else I know of up to that point had. The style of the film is mainly what made it so important at the time and why it is still famous today, but unlike Godard's cold, clinical Pierrot le Fou, there is actually a story here too.

The film shows us the lives of Jules and Jim, a German and a Frenchman who are best friends before they fall in love with the same woman, and actually continue to be best friends anyway after falling in love with the same woman. The woman, Catherine, played in a great performance by Jeanne Moreau, marries one of them, but then decides she wants the other to move into their house, then sleeps with the first one again, and so on. Their story unfold over the course of about 20 years, from 1912 to 1932 or so. While it's easy to see Catherine's charm and why they would like her, it's also tempting to dislike her for her the way she toys with the two men, and to think them contemptible for the way they put up with her shenanigans.

Director Francois Truffaut's style is what really sets this movie apart. I especially liked the lightning-fast prologue, which bounces through a lot of exposition about Jules and Jim's early friendship very quickly. Especially towards the beginning, the film seems to have a much shorter average shot-length than was common in the early 1960s; it's like the movie wants to rush headlong into its story and expects you to be able to keep up. Truffaut uses other little tricks here and there, but they always make sense in terms of the story - I especially liked one little sequence in which he uses brief freeze-frames to capture some of Catherine's facial expressions. Other shots are great just for the way they're set up, such as the scene in which the three characters shout to each other from three different windows. The whole film is characterized by a certain immediacy that Hollywood films of the same period tend to lack. It's clearly a very important part of film history, and I can't believe I just now got around to seeing it.