Jules and Jim, New Wave Heroes

So my posts for these have been not going up and I just realized this, but luckily I saved them and am posting them now, more to follow from past blogs.

Francois Truffaut’s 1961 film Jules et Jim is a fascinating portrait of three people who couldn’t fully live without the others. They were fine on their own, and Catherine even tried to leave several times, but they belonged together. The relationship changed as they grew older and Catherine became more infatuated with Jim, and he with her. Though they both still loved Jules, their personal love grew more and culminated at the end. I think Catherine was the most interesting character in the film, she was a strong woman who even impersonates a man at one point, and she dominates the movie. She is an unusual character though, especially for the time, because she is such a strong female. However, the French New Wave was all about stretching limits and occurred fairly close to the women’s liberation wave in America and most likely France as well, so perhaps it was a calculated choice on this part. Truffaut was afterall one of the main proprietors of the new wave. Although Jules et Jim falls into the New Wave category, it follows a more conventional structure than most new wave examples. It is innovative and unruled more through its story than its filmmaking and editing styles, unlike most new wave films. I think this may be because it came after some of his earlier boundary pushing pieces like The 400 Blows, and because of the nature of the story being so different to begin with.