'Jules and Jim' review
DVD (Criterion Collection)
By Ling Ma
Published: July 25th, 2005 | 5:15pm
Like many of Francois Truffaut's films, which often take place in the personal past (such as the autobiographical The 400 Blows), or in the historical past (such as The Story of Adele H) the gently nostalgic Jules and Jim (1962) begins in the Paris of 1912, where Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) first meet and become great friends. The film is based on a novel by Henri-Pierre Roche, whose disarmingly plebian writing style is sampled in the opening scenes' narration: “They shared their poems and translated them together. They also shared a relative indifference toward money. They chatted easily. Neither had ever had such an attentive listener.”
Enter Catherine (Jeanne Moreau), the charismatic, mercurial woman for whom Jules and Jim extend their friendship. Together, the three are blissfully, idyllically happy, and their scenes together are the most buoyant in the film. We see Catherine dressing up in drag on a spontaneous outing, we see the three racing down a bridge in exilheration. The camera often documents their play like another participant. When the trio vacation in the country, Catherine devises a game to search for lost articles in the woods. Focused on the ground, the camera haphazardly locates strewn items just as the characters stumble on them: matches, postcards, a piece of porcelain, English cigarettes. Playful interludes like these rank as one of the film's, and as Truffaut's, trademarks. Effortless and blithe, there are moments that come off as spontaneously devised simply for the pleasure of cinematic play. That's one of the joys that make Jules and Jim worth watching.
The other is French icon Moreau. With a face that looks as if she is perpetually keeping a secret, Moreau is more difficult to describe than other French New Wave heroines, far wiser than Anna Karina, a million times sexier than Bridgette Bardot, more intuitive than another Truffaut heroine, Claude Jade. As Catherine, Moreau smiles sweetly as a mischevious girl one moment, then rashly bares her teeth as a ruthless deviant the next. Her reactions are unpredictable, wolfish, and sometimes callous, foreshadowing the inevitable turmoil that the threesome will face.
The friendship endures through the increasingly darkening times, from the bohemian twilight of Paris to the first World War, becoming more tangled and conflicted after Catherine marries Jules, but decides she would like Jim as well. Jules and Jim could be described as tragic and melancholic, but what stands out here is how Truffaut nevertheless maintains a resilient breeziness, a lightness to the tone, that is never quite abandoned to weighty storyline and emotional gravity.
Since Jules and Jim is one of Truffaut's most beloved films, it makes sense that the DVD edition (Criterion Collection) is loaded with extra features, if the reasoning is that the number of extras should be proportionate to its timeless fame. The double-disc edition is packaged with a 40-page booklet stuffed with everything from contemporary essays to Truffaut's old writings to Pauline Kael's original review of the film, complete with film stills and ink drawings.
Although the DVD compiles an impressive list of extras, many which include persons involved with the filmmaking process, such as an interview with director of photography Raoul Coutard and audio commentator Jeanne Moreau, the quantity of these features, examining multiple aspects of making the film, has an undermining effect of the inherent effortless and blasé quality about Jules and Jim itself. There is no question that many of the expertly gathered extras are anecdotal and informative, such a documentary on Roche's life, but some strike me as precious and superfluous. Moreau's appearance on a French TV show is fun, just to see her demeanor and cute 60s bouffaut, but the content is unnecessary and boring. “He doesn't pay attention to what he eats,” Moreau observes of Truffaut. The Criterion DVD edition of Jules and Jim is a great investment, but it's best to plumb the depths of its offerings slowly, as not to forget the best part of the film itself: the lovely buoyancy and sheer lightness.
Issue #35
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