Product Description

Hailed as one of the finest films ever made, legendary director François Truffaut’s early masterpiece Jules and Jim charts the relationship between two friends and the object of their mutual obsession over the course of twenty-five years.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #20872 in DVD
• Brand: Image Entertainment
• Released on: 2005-05-31
• Aspect ratio: 2.35:1
• Formats: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD-Video, Special Edition, Subtitled, Widescreen, NTSC
• Original language: English, French, German
• Subtitled in: English
• Number of discs: 2
• Running time: 105 minutes

Amazon.com
François Truffaut's third feature, though it's named for the two best friends who become virtually inseparable in pre-World War I Paris, is centered on Jeanne Moreau's Catherine, the most mysterious, enigmatic woman in his career-long gallery of rich female portraits. Adapted from the novel by Henri-Pierre Roché, Truffaut's picture explores the 30-year friendship between Austrian biologist Jules (Oskar Werner) and Parisian writer Jim (Henri Serre) and the love triangle formed when the alluring Catherine makes the duo a trio. Spontaneous and lively, a woman of intense but dynamic emotions, she becomes the axle on which their friendship turns as Jules woos her and they marry, only to find that no one man can hold her. Directed in bursts of concentrated scenes interspersed with montage sequences and pulled together by the commentary of an omniscient narrator, Truffaut layers his tragic drama with a wealth of detail. He draws on his bag of New Wave tricks for the carefree days of youth--zooms, flash cuts, freeze frames--that disappear as the marriage disintegrates during the gloom of the postwar years. Werner is excellent as Jules, a vibrant young man whose slow, melancholy slide into emotional compromise is charted in his increasingly sad eyes and resigned face, while Serre plays Jim as more of an enigma, guarded and introspective. But both are eclipsed in the glare of Moreau's radiant Catherine: impulsive, demanding, sensual, passionate, destructive, and ultimately unknowable. A masterpiece of the French New Wave and one of Truffaut's most confident and accomplished films. --Sean Axmaker

Customer Reviews

Are We Bound By Ourselves?
This is one of the bonafide classics of cinema. Thus, I, a movie buff, feel obligated to love it. Alas, I can not force myself to love it but I do like it alot and it does impress me in many ways. The acting is superb. Jeanne Moreau effortlessly carries the movie. One of her great, iconic performances that has made her a living legend of the silver screen. Truffaut directs and writes with a fluidity that deftly compliments the sheer volume of dialogue. These characters (and the narrator) talk alot and it was necessary for me to be still and focus incessantly while watching. I don't mind the effort because I found it rewarding. The cinematography is beautiful and the editing is unconventional and inspired.

Jules, Jim & Catherine are free spirits. The men were the original couple and then she, the beguiling beauty, joins them. They are bohemians who pass themselves and each other around like old comfy sweaters as they discuss philosophers and novelists. The movie was condemned by The Legion of Decency when it came out and viewers today (particularly American viewers) may be offended or put off by the movie's refusal to hew to the comfortable, prissy, simplistic black/white, right/wrong morality that is traditional in film. Discussions center mostly on relationships and personalities and experiences. Dialogues about faith and morality are conspicuously few and far between. In their youth, Jules, Jim and Catherine were a perfect threesome running around after each other and being silly. Alas, love ruins everything and Catherine chooses Jules. The friendship is further ruptured by the war.

Jules & Jim are called to do their duty but on opposite sides of the war. They survive and come out of the war and Jim joins Jules and Catherine living on the Reine with their child. Predictable results ensue. Of course, Catherine and Jim fall in love but here with Jules' outward approval. Catherine is portrayed as selfish, flighty, mercurial, cruel and secretive. An enigma of a woman who doesn't know what she wants but knows she isn't happy unless she's being attended to. She is desperate for attention and equally desperate to keep the men in her life guessing. As far as rejection and disapproval, she can dish it out but she can't take it. Purhaps she never allows a man to fully claim her because she is already taken by herself. The men, particularly Jules, are portrayed as passive wimps wrapped around her finger. Enlightened, sensitive men of bohemian Europe. I think this is where my inability to fully embrace this movie comes in. I don't really like her. I see where she's coming from but I don't like how she seems to place her comforts over her child's welfare or bluntly ignore the needs and emotions of others. The men seem like warriors in war but vague and wimpy in real life.

During the war scenes, Truffaut begins to use newsreel footage and will do so near the end of the movie. Times are changing. War and its horrors followed by the rise of fascism. Set against this backdrop is the story of a doomed love triangle. Truffaut draws subtle parallels between Europe's unwillingness to accept the horrific changes taking place under its nose and Catherine's refusal to understand the passage of time. Postwar Jules, Jim & Catherine aren't kids anymore. Adults have responsibilities: spouses, children, jobs, bills, decisions that need to be made and held to. She is a woman now, in a man's world and bound by its conventions. What seems charming and spontaneous in a 20 year old girl, seems immature, unrealistic and selfish in a woman. Eventually, a woman of her time and place, particularly a mother, must choose betwen living selfishly or selflessly, giving up themselves to those who need them. Catherine chooses selfishness but does so in a way we can't blame her. Her final decision reminded me of Edna Pontellier's final decision in Kate Chopin's The Awakening. If she can't have herself, then noone can. She chooses her own destiny, no matter how destructive that may be. She makes the only decision her mind and personality allow her to make and I can admire that. I don't like her decision or her for it but I can admire both. I, too, would rather die free than live in captivity.

Jules et Jim - magnifique!
Pleasantly surprising movie. This is a very well made French film. The movie was intriguing and you never knew what was happening next. The film explores mainly the friendship between two characters and how each other's lives are changed when they fall for the same woman. The film takes place around WW1.

The DVD from Citerion Collection, comes with 2 disc loaded with Special Features.

a taste of the Belle Epoque for our time
This is one of my all-time favorite films, and my favorite Truffaut film--it was also reportedly Truffaut's favorite of his own works. Visually, it has a kind sepia-toned haze of one's remembrances of a lazy afternoon, or one's best childhood summer. The costumes, the bike rides, the delightful characters the protagonists (Jules, Jim & Catherine) encounter are a model for the bohemian life that many still aspire to--enjoying great food, drink, art and theater, and of course a very free attitude toward love/sex/romance. The film depicts what happens when the fun goes too far and becomes obsession.

The story is about obsession, two men's obsession with a woman who, in a very French style approach to femininity, does what she wants with whomever she wants to, when she wants to. It's a great story because the men don't know exactly why they can't let go of Catherine (the female object of their desire), but she seems totally assured and deems herself worthy of their subservience. When they pull away, she fights hard to reel them back in--to the point of risking everything.

It's really a delight visually and an intriguing and unusual take on how a woman's 'mystique' can hold a man in thrall. Don't see it if you're a misogynist or feel uncomfortable with the idea of a woman being the object of a man's desire. Also has a lot of interesting filming devices that were ahead of their time (Truffaut's genius)...those scenes will stick in your mind and haunt your dreams. A must-have for the library of any true film-lover.