Excellent, Without a doubt!!

After playing with our expectations, this turns out to be a very different sort of film.

Story: It's very simple but honestly that is fine.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Spoilers. Observations. Opinions.Powerful. Smashing. Elegant.Saw this once before. Remembered the two men involved with one woman. Wanted to see it again, many years later.Daring story for the time. Manizing woman, not womanizing man, even though the men had seen other women. This time, her affairs are described, and she wants to stay free and easy, untied permanently to anyone. Jeanne Moreau is the star of this film, not the two men.She keeps paying the two main men back for their transgressions against her, and at the end makes a final payback again to both of them. Score one, two and three, but this time it is fatal.Jules is scratching his head at what to make of the whole thing. I don't see any tears, however. He makes sure that the other two in the triangle are sleeping side by side for all eternity. But what about the little girl? We don't see her near or at the end.Teutonic men may not make the greatest lovers. They are known to have an iceberg instead of a heart, and can be very selfish. They can be quite cold and heartless, but French men are well known for making women very happy in many ways. Paired with a French woman, Jim did better than did Jules. Jules couldn't keep women early on, and before he met Catherine he decided to take up with the pros. He couldn't even keep Catherine after he married her. She was way too much for him. Jim, however, had no problem attracting tons of eager women surrounding his newfound enchantment with Catherine. You never saw Jim hooking up with prostitutes.RIP Jeanne Moreau. I remember her grande dame from Ever After, in which at the beginning of the film she tells the Grimm Brothers that Cinderella was a real person, and her own great- or great-great-grandmother. The film goes on to show Drew Barrymore as a new filmic version of Cinderella, kicking butt of a hottie Prince Charming. Leonardo da Vinci even appears in this film, as a good friend of the future princess.Oskar Werner I remember from Ship of Fools and Fahrenheit 451. In real life, he was in the Nazi army of World War Two, although as an actual pacifist feigning incompetence and wanting KP duty even though his blonde hair made him an ideal Aryan specimen. His real heart lay in acting in the theatre, not in fighting on the battle front. His early theatrical career had been interrupted by the war.I am a degreed historian from the university, and am still involved in taking coursework in film history and war studies. I study the lives of actors and actresses, both stage and screen. I am an actress, dancer, singer, makeup artist, fashion designer, film critic and movie reviewer. I have critiqued almost 400 films and TV shows for IMDb since 2002.

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.

After spending April watching 30 Czech films from the Cold War era,I decided that for the next 100 days I would watch 100 French films.With April coming to the end,I started searching round for the Criterion edition of Jules & Jim,but I soon realised that I had forgotten where I've put the disc! Franticly looking round,I was happy to discover that Artificial Eye have also put a DVD version of the title out,which luckily gave me the chance to meet Jules and Jim.The plot-1912:France:Being on his own after moving from Austria to France, Jules is delighted to meet Jim,who shares Jules bohemian outlook on life.Spending time with each other,Jules and Jim begin to bond over the arts and poetry. Taking things only to a "no-strings" level with women,Jim and Jules both cross paths with a mysterious girl called Catherine,who they both fall in love with. Aware of their shared love for Catherine,Julies and Jim try to keep their friendship alive,as WWI breaks out. View on the film:Warmly welcoming Jules & Jim, Artificial Eye give the title a sharp transfer,which smoothly catches the lightning shots,and also keeps the dialogue crisp. Breezing in from Marie Dubois's wonderful mile a minute performance as Thérèse,the gorgeous Jeanne Moreau gives a marvellous performance as Catherine. Entwining Jules and Jim with a magnetic smile, Moreau strikes a precise balance of keeping Catherine's alluring charms alight whilst making her frivolous outlook more brittle.Working in Comedy clubs when he was cast, Henri Serre gives a superb performance as Jim.Swaggering around the opening brimming with confidence, Serre vividly peels away Jim's charisma to reveal a sincere friendship with Jules,and an inability to look away from the flames of his love for Catherine.Enter as an outsider, Oskar Werner gives a great performance as Jules,whose nervous stance tightens the bond of friendship he has with Jim,and also pulls Jules to the care- free grin of Catherine.Spanning the WWI period,co-writer/(along with Jean Gruault) director François Truffaut adaptation of Henri-Pierre Roché's novel places the passage of time firmly on the shoulders of the trio,with their care-free and bohemian outlooks struggling to survive the abrasive twists and turns that Catherine grinds Jim and Jules friendship with.Whilst there are some large areas of plot that get brushed away, (does no one care about the kid?!) Gruault and Truffaut treat the friendship between Jules and Jim with a brilliant level of care and affection,as Jules and Jim try to find ways to keep their connection,despite being well aware that they share a love for the same girl.Rolling out on a very low budget, (Moreau had to help fund the completion of production)director Truffaut and cinematographer Raoul Coutard roll out the friendship between Jules,Jim and Catherine in a dazzling,ultra-stylised shine. Soaking the screen in pure French New Wave with freeze frames and "masking", Truffaut elegantly explores the various stages of Jules and Jim's friendship,as the initial excitement around each other sets off whip-smart panning shots and slick screen wipes,which transforms into smoothly-hit tracking shots and ghostly overlapping images,as Jules,Jims and Catherine's friendship reaches breaking point.

I'd heard of this film over the years with an element of genius assigned to it, but as I viewed it the other day I was genuinely underwhelmed. The principal characters simply don't strike me as real people. They exist with virtually no reaction to situations that would make ordinary people respond with emotions ranging from jealousy and insecurity to outright rage and hatred. In fact, at the picture's finale I began wondering whether there was an element of mental illness in the character of Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). It's one thing to be driven to suicide by severe depression, but that didn't seem to be a factor in Catherine's make up. And if she wanted to kill herself on a whim, why commit murder at the same time by taking her lover Jim (Henri Serre) with her? It's not like he had a voice in the decision.Leading up to that, the whole relationship among the principals seemed rather surreal. Drawn into an affair with Catherine long after he had been best friends with Jules (Oskar Werner), Jim himself seems to have a directionless life following the Great War. He's about ready to propose to his girlfriend Gilberte (Vanna Urbino) and instead is drawn into an unsatisfying relationship with Catherine, who makes no secret of having regular dalliances with other men as well. For her part Catherine leaves Jules for a period of six months, and he's left to care for himself and their young daughter in the interim.Am I missing something here? 'Normal' people don't live this way, but then again, normal may have been redefined over the past four decades since this film came out. But there was just no warming up to these characters as the film progressed and it left me with just a perverse reaction when it was all over. I would try again, but my instincts are usually correct the first time.