Jules et Jim 1962

Jules et Jim is François Truffaut's third feature, released in January 1962. It follows two friends in Paris before the First World War, the shy Austrian Jules and the tall Frenchman Jim, and Catherine, the free-spirited woman they both love. She marries Jules, the war puts the two men on opposite sides, and afterwards the three try to share a life together in a chalet on the Rhine. The film covers about twenty years in under two hours, with a fast narrator, freeze-frames, newsreel footage and Georges Delerue's whirling waltz. It is based on a novel by Henri-Pierre Roché, written when he was in his seventies and drawn from his own life. Jeanne Moreau's Catherine, laughing, impulsive and dangerous, is one of the great roles of the New Wave.

Two friends and a statue

Jules and Jim meet in Montparnasse around 1912 and become inseparable: they talk about books, translate each other's poems, box together. At a friend's slide show they see a photograph of an ancient statue of a woman with a calm smile and are so struck by it that they travel to an Adriatic island to see it. When they meet Catherine, she has the same smile. Jules tells Jim: not this one.

Catherine dresses up as a boy with a painted moustache to walk the streets of Paris with them, and challenges them to a race on a footbridge, which she starts before the signal. When Jim talks dismissively about women, she jumps into the Seine to make a point.

War and after

Catherine marries Jules and they move to Austria. The war breaks out; Jules and Jim fight on opposite sides, each afraid of killing the other. Afterwards Jim visits the couple in their chalet. Jules, who has a daughter with Catherine, admits that she has had lovers and that he would rather share her than lose her. He encourages Jim to love her too. For a time, the arrangement almost works.

The style

Truffaut uses every tool he can: a voice-over that reads passages of the novel at speed, still photographs, freeze-frames on Moreau's face, archive images of the war, sudden changes of tone from farce to sorrow. Raoul Coutard's camera follows the characters through fields and along roads with a lightness that suits the early part, then grows quieter.

Delerue's score, especially the waltz theme and the song Le Tourbillon, sung by Moreau herself, gives the film its energy. The song was written by Serge Rezvani, who appears in the film under the name Boris Bassiak.

Catherine

Catherine has been described as a feminist icon and as a destructive whim of the male imagination, and both readings have their supporters. She refuses to be owned and demands the same freedom men give themselves, but she can also be cruel and self-absorbed. Moreau never makes her simple to like or to dismiss.

Where it fits

The film was released in the same year as Agnès Varda's Cléo de 5 à 7 and at the height of the New Wave. It was criticised for its moral freedom, and it was restricted for young audiences in France.

If you have seen Les Quatre Cents Coups, this is the natural next Truffaut. Compare it with Godard's Le Mépris, made the following year, for a much darker view of love. More films of the decade are listed in the best French films of the 1960s and in our selection of French love stories.