Jules and Jim

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Jules and Jim
original film poster
Directed by	François Truffaut
Produced by	Marcel Berbert François Truffaut
Written by	Henri-Pierre Roché François Truffaut Jean Gruault
Starring	Jeanne Moreau Oskar Werner Henri Serre
Music by	Boris Bassiak Georges Delerue
Cinematography	Raoul Coutard
Distributed by	Cinédis
Release date(s)	January 23, 1962 (French release)
Running time	105 min.
Language	French
IMDb profile

Jules and Jim (French: Jules et Jim) is a 1961 film by François Truffaut based on the semi-autobiographical novel by Henri-Pierre Roché.

Truffaut described the book as 'a perfect hymn to love and perhaps to life' ^{[citation needed]}. He came across it during the mid 1950s whilst browsing through some secondhand books in Paris and later befriended the elderly author who approved of the young director's attempt to translate the words on the page into celluloid images.

1 Synopsis
2 Style
3 Influence
4 See also
5 External links

[edit] Synopsis

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

The film is set before, during and after the First World War in several different parts of France and Germany. Jules (Oskar Werner) is a shy writer from Austria who makes friends with the more extroverted Jim (Henri Serre). They share an interest in the world of the arts and the Bohemian life. After encounters with several women, they meet the free-spirited, capricious Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) and both men are affected by her presence and her attitude towards life. After the separation that occurs during the war, Jules and Catherine marry and have a daughter. They invite Jim to visit, and later stay, with them. Their ménage à trois becomes a love triangle which leads, ultimately, to tragedy.

[edit] Style

One of the seminal products of the French New Wave, Jules and Jim is an inventive encyclopaedia of the language of cinema that incorporates newsreel footage, photographic stills, freeze frames, panning shots, wipes, masking, dolly shots, and voiceover narration (by Michel Subor). Truffaut's cinematographer was the virtuoso Raoul Coutard, a frequent collaborator with Jean-Luc Godard, who employed the latest lightweight photographic equipment to create an extremely fluid and distinctive camera style. For example, some of the postwar scenes were shot using cameras mounted on bicycles. The evocative musical score is by Georges Delerue and one song, Le Tourbillon (The Whirlwind) summed up the turbulence of the lives of the three main characters, becoming a popular hit. The dialogue is predominantly in French, with occasional lines in English and German.

[edit] Influence

Quentin Tarantino references this work in his film Pulp Fiction in the line "Don't Jimmy me, Jules." A sequence from it appears briefly in a cinema scene in Jean-Pierre Jeunet's Amélie.

It is also heavily referenced in Cameron Crowe's Vanilla Sky where: a clip featuring Jeanne Moreau appears during the finale montage; a poster for the film is displayed in the main character's bedroom; two best friends fall in love for the same woman – who leaves the insecure one for the passionate one – causing friction between them; a climatic scene involves a woman driving her car off a bridge with her lover.

There are also several allusions to Jules et Jim in Edward Norton's directorial debut Keeping the Faith.

The song 'When the Lights Go Out All Over Europe' by The Divine Comedy references Jules and Jim in the lines "Jeanne can't choose between the two / 'Cos Jules is hip and Jim is cool / And so they live together".

The music video for the popular song "Kiss Me" by Sixpence None The Richer pays tribute to the film and recreates many of the clasic scenes.

The 2003 film "The Dreamers" by Bernardo Bertolluci plays homage to the film too.