•
Rating:
The film "Jules and Jim" can be summarized in four words, love, death, friendship, war. In his work, Truffaut managed to magically bind them together, sketching the figures of the three protagonists without emotional tension, and at the same time with tenderness, thus creating, from a banal love triangle, one of the most beautiful films in the history of cinema. He loves her, his best friend loves her too, and she... loves them both, but she is above all a free spirit, exempt from obligations and constraints, so fidelity is just a word. Amid farewells and reunions, between pain and joy, they will spend the most beautiful years of their life. Based on the novel by Henri Pierre Roché, it is a film about friendship, understood in its most noble sense.
In 1912, the Frenchman Jules (Henri Serre) and the Austrian Jim (Oskar Werner) study literature in Paris, spending their time flirting with women, reading poetry, and discussing art. One day, they meet Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). After spending a beautiful vacation together, they both fall in love with the enchanting young lady. Jules marries her, and later they move to Austria. The First World War will separate the two friends, who will fight on opposite fronts, but they will have the opportunity to meet several times, as the relationship between the three protagonists develops over several decades. "Jules and Jim" should be watched as one admires a landscape or listens to a beautiful song; the film is a splendid ballad that shifts from moments of poetic lightness to phases of intense tragedy because it embodies Catherine's spirit, who, with her magical presence, is the soul of the story. Every event is dictated by her lust for life, living carefree, savoring life's taste in every smallest nuance. Catherine does not represent the spirit of the age or even that of the time when the film was made, before feminism and sexual liberation; she was the prototype of a woman living in freedom, embodying emancipation from conventions and current rules, liberation from ties with limitations in romantic relationships.
This generates wonder and astonishment in the viewer; it is understood that her way of acting is natural, that it comes from under her skin, that she is in harmony with herself, and everything she does is dictated by her innocence. As Jim says, she feels the need to reinvent love continuously, and thus Catherine also reinvents life, perhaps awakening feelings in many that life itself forced to set aside. Catherine makes men fall in love; in the film, she seduces both Jules and Jim, leading them both to ruin due to her volatility, but the friendship developed between the two will remain unchanged until the tragic end; nothing will spoil it, neither war nor the love they feel for the same woman.
The story centers on the three protagonists, portrayed with intensity and richness of nuance; there is a sense that in this "ménage à trois," each follows an already determined destiny, without any of them having the power to change it. "Jules and Jim" is a story narrated with graceful detachment, reconciling the pleasure of unfolding the facts with the ambition to create a fresh work, of tasteful elegance, an impertinent game in which common stereotypes about morality are set aside, favoring liberation from traditional constraints and rules. Francois Truffaut considered this film "an ode to life and death, a demonstration of the impossibility of any amorous combination outside the couple"
PS. I believe that the only actress capable of portraying Catherine so effectively was Jeanne Moreau herself; just remember the scene where she performs "Le tourbillon"; without her presence, the film would not have been so effective.
Loading comments slowly
