What a waste of my time!!!

Sadly Over-hyped

Let's be realistic.

A clunky actioner with a handful of cool moments.

Francois Truffaut's 1962 French New Wave classic JULES ET JIM tells the story of two pals and the woman they both fall in love with. In 1912, Jules (Oskar Werner), an Austrian living in France, strikes up a deep friendship with Parisian writer Jim (Henri Serre). The two are the best of buddies, downright inseparable. After they have each experienced a series of attempts and fiascoes with the local ladies, Jules meets Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), a vivacious and free-spirited woman, and they move back to Austria together and marry. The outbreak of World War I separates the two friends and years pass, but after the Armistice, Jim visits Jules and Catherine and finds their marriage rocky. Catherine decides to leave Jules, and she turns her affection to Jim, but this doesn't shake the two men's firm friendship.The bond between the two men, and the vivacity and ethereal nature of Catherine, make for a film initially so positive and heartwarming that it is easy to see why JULES ET JIM has won a very wide audience beyond many other French films of the mid-20th-century. The script lets Moreau, already one of the most legendary actresses of her age, show off all kinds of tricks she had long honed in the theatre.But the story increasingly takes on tragic tones, for Catherine is a deeply conflicted person, desirous of the two men by turns but ultimately unable to find happiness. In a modern Hollywood film a character like Catherine would probably be written as the "Manic Pixie Dream Girl" archetype, existing purely to show the male interests how to love life and live it to the fullest, but lacking any life of her own. In Truffaut's film, however, the depths of Catherine's psyche is what ultimately draws the plot. Yet because the film is still roughly told from the point of view of the two male characters, the film does convincingly depict the sort of relationship where you love someone and must support them through their struggles, but that person still remains ultimately unknowable.In spite of being a film of wide appeal due to its likable characters and charm, JULES ET JIM is still an exemplar of the French New Wave. It shows some relatively innovative features such as jump takes, freeze frames, and carousel-like camera work, all shot by legendary cinematographer Raoul Coutard who was also responsible for Jean-Luc Godard's films of this era. Truffaut and his peers in the French New Wave were mad about the history of film, and here we get a sort of encyclopedia of film: allusions to the silent era, use of newsreels and other archival footage, and a voice-over narrator that comes in and out.I enjoyed watching JULES ET JIM and there were some moments that I am sure I will long remember – Marie Dubois's brief supporting role as one of Jules' early love interests is laugh-out-loud funny. Yet I must admit that I was disappointed by the pacing in the last third of the film, which feels clumsy. The film also gradually abandons its New Wave freshness as the tragic part of the story takes over, and one already sees Truffaut drifting back towards conventional filmmaking. So, I personally would not include it among my top films. Still, its classic status is easy to understand and it's worth a look for any curious viewer.

I decided to watch this film again to see how the passage of time might have changed my perception.This time around I saw Catherine as being far less alluring and mysterious then just plain sick -- a pathetic example of someone with Borderline Personality Disorder.Catherine may be shapely, beautiful, multilingual, and a reader but she also seems to loathe her own company. When Catherine doesn't get what Catherine wants, when she wants, she exacts a harsh price.The clumsy, pedantic, and ever-reliable Jules manages to survive this relationship because he accepts Catherine sans complaint or revenge. He takes what she dishes out and waits around for more. (How appropriate that he dresses as a slave for the Beaux Arts Ball and plays a game with Sabine in which he's a whipped horse!) Whereas, Jim is ambivalent. If Catherine won't love him, well then, he won't love her, either. Voilà his fatal flaw.One day, Catherine shows Jim that she is deadly serious: He must pay. Yet he doesn't take her rash action seriously. Or maybe he is so depressed by that point that he's ready to meet his Maker.This still-stunning film offers some sobering lessons for anyone who is searching for love. The person who intrigues you may actually wish you dead. So, as Jules warned Jim: Beware!

Suphie Wesner 10/08/2012 Jules and Jim Movie Reviews, all by François TruffautThese three movies are all hall-marks of Truffaut's classically appealing style; somehow, whether in color or in black and white, Truffaut always manages to "get it right." What we mean by this is, he either chooses really charming characters who win our hearts (and minds), or he has interesting and intriguing (unusual) story-lines, or, indeed, Truffaut just simply has good ideas to write about (let's face it, though, he simply does, sometimes, use a lot of the same themes, about love, married women, and threesomes, though, not in a sexual way)... In Jules et Jim, this interesting, intriguing, film with charming characters, albeit a really downer ending and theme (kind of a Romeo and Juliet type thing; a woman scorned who goes to the last extreme to avenge herself of the death of her lover's love for her, a murder-suicide), really pulls us in with its starting premise; a lonely blond woman, named Therese, must face the facts when her abusive, drinking, though, at least politically motivated (anarchist) husband, screams at her and she considers that the last straw. In general, too, we find that the movie has a lot of good moral qualities: we see that, though this woman basically "shares" these two men, she toys with their hearts minimally, and genuine love is valued a lot. Indeed, we see that she "goes for" Jules, the German-looking Frenchman, while Jim is sort of her lover on the side. It is a complicated piece by Truffaut, set in the 1800's when trains were still all the rage, the can-can was coming to the fore of the entertainment scene, and costumes included hooped skirts, tail coats, top hats, fancy shirt cuffs, stiff bibs, wool rags, and spats... Interestingly enough, though, we see that a woman in 1800's France was not looked down upon simply for seeing two men, this was not enough to label her a "whore" in most people's eyes, or they didn't know about it, and people would not look at this situation in naive shock and disbelief, like they might in more Victorian societies. Indeed, we find that Therese, and, later , Jim's wife, Catherine, enjoys equal respect from both men, something which is indeed unusual and to be cherished by any sweet, rather innocent, and popular object of another two competing people's affection. Yes, we see through this movie, Jules and Jim, the saying "Hell hath no fury like a Woman Scorned" brought to life in no better way possible; indeed, we realize that women like men, but in a different way, really are sensitive to having their feelings or emotions for another, scorned; when she senses this, the main character, decides to try to kill her beloved, though she loves him, right then and there. For heaven's sake, the woman, in fact, did write letters like no other to her lover, Jim, professing her love to him, passionately. He would write back but there seemed always to be the unremitting circumstances which would not permit them to marry and stay together. Jules was always the simpler of the two friends, which can mean great things, that he was less of a back-stabber, for one. So, what is the reason, here? Because he will not have her love-child, as he is in difficult circumstances at the moment, married with a child, or with another child on the way. So, we soon see, that, indeed, she is crazed enough by love and remorse to want to commit murder (she is also, generally, mentally unwell, and suicidal, to boot) with her shot-gun at her side, but, instead, she takes him for a last, eerie ride, and then drives the old Model T-, or early version of a Model T-ford off the edge of a bridge and thus, kills them, both. So we then see that, indeed, their bodies are made into ash (by having their bones ground; this interesting process is shown by the film, no less), and the two lovers love made immemorial, and forced to be made immortal, forever. The film finally ends by showing German-looking Jules (I thought he had to be German when I first saw him; shows how caught-unawares I was when first sitting through this film, I had no idea at the time, even, that Jules was a French name. This took a while to sink in, for me, as the "s" is suspiciously pronounced, in fact). . . . . He is left alone with his love-child from the beautiful Bohemian-woman-turned-crazy-woman, but he looks as though he shall miss his two friends indefinitely, as these were his sole, close, bosom buddies, for a long while, and they taught him a lot about life, love, and joy. The film shows that, alas, life sometimes does go haltingly, but perseveringly, on. This tale of turn-of-the-century Paris, and, indeed, sometimes, rural France, was a real winner, and a period film, at that, not to be missed. It is high drama, and high art, all in one. Acting is done by at least one famous actress, that is to say, Jeanne Moreau, and the part played by Jim, too, at least by French audiences, is relatively well-known, Oskar Werner. Jules was just played by, HENRI SERRE.

Francois Truffaut's films have never been particularly deep, and his black and white 1962 'masterpiece,' Jules And Jim, is no exception to that claim. Obviously, the quotation marks around the term declare that, no, it's not really a masterpiece, but in researching old criticism of the film it's amazing how often this term was bandied about without any support for its claim. Having said that, and given the rather fallow and overrated ground that is the Truffaut soil, I can attest that, of the handful of films of his I have seen, Jules And Jim is the best of the lot. But, had he not first gnawed his teeth at the Cahiers Du Cinema rag, thus gaining fame there, I doubt that he could have made it as anything more than a competent director of B films. I state this while having great admiration for B film directors like Jacques Tourneur, Roger Corman, Inoshiro Honda, Ed Wood, and Edgar Ulmer, among others, and realizing that, truth be told, Truffaut simply was not a better filmmaker than some of the names I quoted- Tourneur and Ulmer, especially. And Jules And Jim is simply a film that occasionally breaches into high quality, only to be sucked under by an undertow of self-indulgence and preciousness.Despite being titled after the two man male characters, Jules (Oskar Werner), an introverted Austrian writer and his French friend, the extroverted Jim (Henri Serre), the film is really about a woman, Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), who is an archetype for what is known as the artsy psycho-babe. Her filmic descendants are many, but the most famed one is her filmic namesake, that of author Catherine Trammel, played by Sharon Stone, in Basic Instinct. No, she's not as obviously blackhearted, but she's clearly off her rocker, and it's interesting that, in scanning through dozens of film reviews for Jules and Jim, I never saw a single mention that Catherine is a murderer/murderess. And that's telling, since the whole film is basically a paean to psychobitchery, deceit, and insincerity in women, yet the most heinous and self-defining thing the woman does, which is to annihilate herself and her bête noir, is almost wholly ignored, as insignificant a thing in her character vis-à-vis her supposed 'free-spiritedness,' or such.