I had thought when I saw what was coming up next that I would be hitting up French New Wave for the first time with this particular movie, the romantic drama Jules et Jim or Jules and Jim as I keep seeing it listed in English. Then it turned out that Alphaville movie I watched about week before I typed this up was part of that New Wave. Honestly, I’m not even 100% sure what French New Wave is, and I’d rather not look into it too much right this second. I want to go more on my own reactions to everything I am seeing for the first time. So, basically, this paragraph here will be the only time I even reference French New Wave.
That said., I have been pretty impressed by it so far.
Jules et Jim is, despite the title, the story of three people, and the actor who gets their name before the title of the film in the opening credits is Jeanne Moreau. She isn’t Jules or Jim. She’s Catherine. And her presence is more or less what makes the film what it is. Jules (Oskar Werner) is a shy, blonde Austrian introvert. Jim (Henri Serre) is his taller, dark haired, extroverted French friend. The two are living it up as the Bohemian artists they aspire to be, both as writers. It’s set in a time before the First World War, and the two guys are basically just enjoying themselves, working on their respective artforms, and having a good time. While arguing over Shakespeare in a cafe, the young woman with them, presumably dating Jules, simply gets bored, chats with a man seated next to them, and leaves with the guy. As it is, Jules and Jim just shrug it off and figure there are more women out there.
That woman, Thérèse (Marie Dubois), actually returns late in the film, no more upset at Jules and Jim than they were with her, telling Jim a long story about all the men she hooked up with after leaving the cafe, a seemingly epic story in its own right where she got married, divorced, and even found herself in a brothel at one point until she finally married a mortician, the one man she could never bring herself to cheat on. Various other people keep coming over to greet Jim the entire time she tells her story, but she never even pauses to make sure Jim is paying attention. She just keeps plowing forward. This film isn’t exactly a comedy, but I found the story mildly amusing, and it does somewhat explain what kind of film this is: it’s one where people fall in and out of love all the time, and no one seems to mind.
Or that’s the theory. Jules and Jim get inspired to go looking for an ancient piece of sculpture on an island with an enigmatic smile only for the pair to then meet Catherine, a woman that the narrator says has the same smile, but I don’t think she ever shows it when the narrator mentions it. Instead, Catherine is something of a force of nature. That’s actually how Jules describes her. He says, late in the film, that she’s not the most intelligent, beautiful, or sincere woman he’s ever met. Both Jules and JIm end up with her, and Jules even has a daughter (Sabine Haudepin) by her, but she cheats on both of them, actions she says are done to remove “debts” like how Jules’s mother made some unspecified comments about Catherine at her wedding to Jules, so naturally that gave Catherine a reason to have a one night stand on the day of the wedding.
Why do Jules and Jim put up with this? That’s one of two excellent questions this film should provoke for anyone who’s ever seen anything involving a love triangle. The other is why don’t Jules or Jim resent the other. Jules and Jim begin the film as the closest of friends, and they end the film as the closest of friends, and nothing seems to come between them, even the Great War when the two are actually fighting on opposite sides. It is the deepest hope of both Jules and Jim that, during the war, they do nothing that might get the other killed. That would be the worst thing that could have happened to either of them.
That’s not to say that the two guys don’t feel any sort of jealousy when Catherine is with either of them. The thing is, they are such good friends that both want the other to be happy so much that they are able to share with each other those few times when they are jealous. And Catherine is not completely heartless, such as how she screws around with Jules only once when Jim could hear them because she saw it hurt Jim. But Catherine is instead an impulsive woman with her own ideas on what she can and can’t do. Jules and Jim might have been a pair of carefree guys who just did as they saw fit when the film opens, but there’s a moment when Jim comes back to get Catherine, she’s out, and the guys talk out how important their friendship is to the point where Jim decides to return to Paris before she gets back, the guys even working out an excuse for Catherine so she won’t know he was there, only for Catherine to return before Jim can leave, causing the guys to abandon the whole plan.
A film like this can only end one way: tragically and impulsively thanks to Catherine’s sudden change of heart. Arguably, Catherine may be more interested in Jim, and that may be due to the fact he seems to grow more resistant to her inconsistent ways over time than Jules does. But it is Jim who climbs into a car with Catherine behind the wheel as she has something to tell him, and it is Jules who is asked to watch, and it is Catherine who drives the car off a broken bridge, killing both herself and Jim. Did Jim know what she was doing? The one flash director François Truffaut shows of the pair before they go over the bridge doesn’t show either of them looking too concerned. As such, two die while the third watches, and he is left to fulfill final requests on what to do with their ashes. Only he can’t because Catherine’s request was actually against the law, a fact that somehow seems to fit in with everything else the film had to say about her. She did her own thing, and even though Jules is left to mourn both her and Jim, it isn’t the sort of film I would have thought it would be with a love triangle. It’s a woman who has an enigmatic smile and the two men who can’t quit her, but the men still somehow remain friends despite it all.
In short, it’s unlike anything I have experienced before, and it’s films like these, as I discover them, that allow me to really enjoy an experiment like this.
NEXT: It’s time for another foreign language film, but this one is my first Kurosawa film. So, be back soon for the 1963 Japanese police thriller High and Low.
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