Bridging the Gap: A Short Reflection on Jules and Jim

In 1962 Francois Truffaut made his third, and arguably best feature Jules and Jim. The story about two best friends from different countries both living in Paris who fall for the same girl when she mysteriously enters their lives one day, Catherine played by the indubitable Jeanne Moreau. Looking back, the film came at a very pivotal point in Truffaut’s career and reflects that in many various strands and tendencies. From bridging the gap over aesthetic tendencies of the much varied new wave movement and classical Hollywood cinema which Truffaut loved, to existential and multi-textual examinations on love, life, and French culture, Jules and Jim serves as a honing of aesthetic and theoretical sensibilities for Truffaut and the break through of an auteur to advancing beyond the confines of the French New Wave movement of recent years in which he was directly affiliated with.

In order to understand Jules and Jim and the films title characters, it is imperative to understand the complex nature of Catherine and her relationship with Jules and Jim respectively. Having been discovered on the street by the men after they see her face on a sculpture and vow to find this, the perfect woman, there is a series of static shots that establish the physical features of her face and the similarity to that of the statue the two men were introduced to by a friend, Albert. This cinematic representation of a form of great infatuation and perfection distinctly creates a separation between Catherine and the two men that stays forever, because she is in fact a goddess. As Eliane DalMolin states in her essay, “When they meet Catherine, they know she is their “statufied” desire come true. However, Catherine’s complex nature leaves her out of psychological reach, and despite her coming into Jules and Jims human world, she remains an unattainable object of desire throughout the film,” (p. 238). Utilizing this rather mysterious driving force for the film, Truffaut examines the state of love, knowledge, relationships, and interconnectivity in pre and post-WWI France.

This layered story of a love triangle spanning decades from before the start of World War One up until when the characters reach middle age is inherently melodramatic and connected back to Truffaut’s love of the classical Hollywood picture. This story arc is presented in an ultimately complex but subdued form of French New Wave editing, mis-en-scene, and cinematography. For instance, if the characters were involved in a back and forth dialogue scene, Truffaut and editor Claudine Bouche would simply cut out 15 seconds of the middle of the scene if they felt it was filler. While the mis-en-scne and cinematography is much more lavish than The 400 Blows and much less radical than Shoot the Piano Player, it still retains a quality of true life accentuated with minimalistic detail although the film is in no way a minimalist piece.

Truffaut explores, in many ways, the absurd condition of modern thought process and an existential view of the rupture, which ends up dictating most of the characters actions and own ideals throughout the film. As Allen Thiher states in his essay “The Existential Play in Truffaut’s Early Films”, “In Jules and Jim, on the other hand, absurd chance is incorporated into the very fabric of the plot itself in such a way that the plot not only sets forth the dramatic action, but its very structure also connotes the arduous difficulty of choice in a world given over to the absurd,” (p. 187). For instance, Catherine is late to a rendezvous with Jim at a small café, showing up at 8 when she was supposed to be there at 7, and Jim leaves just before she gets there. It’s because of this missed experience she ends up marrying Jules and moving in together. Most of the actions in the characters lives are dictated by sheer accident and chance.

Jules and Jim become aware of this absurdist standpoint while fighting on opposite side of the trenches in WWI, with Jules going home to Germany to fight for his country. In letters to their respective lovers, both Jules and Jim’s main concern was not accidentally killing their best friend. This self-imposed recognition of the absurd is an inherently New Wave technique to open the audience to not only examine the characters but also themselves directly through the cinema. Rather than focus on political aspects (like his peer Godard did) Truffaut instead turns the New Wave aesthetic principals in upon themselves to examine ones self and the relationship to the cinema one can have. For example, in the penultimate scene were Jim sneaks in to see Catherine and they get into a disagreement and she pulls a rather large six-shooter revolver on him, the action comes out of nowhere and nothing truly eludes to this level of severity but it is accepted. The editing is quick and somewhat evading as the viewer doesn’t see the gun until its already out, immediately invoking a visceral reaction while trying to comprehend what’s happening in context to the characters relationship.

The other imperative aspect to understanding the pinnacle of Jules and Jim in Truffaut’s career is the films relation to the two that came before it, The 400 Blows and Shoot the Piano Player. With the quintessentially New Wave styling’s of aesthetics and American movie mash-ups in the latter and the revelatory breakthrough of the former, all three of Truffaut’s first films had a very important mark on the man and the history of cinema. While all three films hold aesthetic tendencies of the New Wave and I would consider all three to be films of the French New Wave school, Jules and Jim is a mature formation of ideals presented in the first two films. From the flighty use of real Paris streets and locations in The 400 Blows to aberrant mash-ups of content and cinematic language in Shoot the Piano Player, Jules and Jim utilizes these elements to create a much more subdued style of New Wave filmmaking that beckons the viewer into a much more personal journey. For instance, a pivotal scene in the film takes place when all three main characters go out for a stroll around Paris, utilizing handheld camera work and quick editing Truffaut accurately displays not only the context of all three characters as a collective but also their individual feelings of their current time and place. Including spontaneity of decisions such as Catherine decided to jump into a river at a seconds notice, unbeknownst to either Jules or Jim.

This important work of French cinema holds its place not only in the echelons of the New Wave movement but also its incorporation of a more formal cinematic style of predominantly American cinematic history. From its frank exploration of the absurdist condition in modern thought processes to utilization of both aesthetic ends of the cinematic spectrum, Jules and Jim is an engaging masterwork forged in both new and old cinematic tendencies.