Truffaut finds the perfect canvas to unite two of his favorite motifs; impossible, destructive, absolute love and the love for art. Art provides the chance for survival. He said, “Usually it’s literature that saves film, but here it is film that saved a great piece of literature.” It’s a unique achievement as normally books are only made into films if they already have a solid fan base.
Jules et Jim features the first appearance to Jeanne Moreau (as Catherine). She was in The 400 Blows but only in a small role, she lost a dog. Catherine is an incredibly liberating expression of female’s sexual and intellectual freedom. Truffaut uses love triangles in many if not all of his films. The end of his films focuses on the left over member of the triangle, the survivor. Bernadette in Les Mistons, Antoine Doinel in The 400 Blows, Charlie in Shoot the Piano Player, and Jules, all offer their gaze to us and an ambiguous mix of solitude, and freedom. This is just part of what constitutes Truffaut as an auteur.
The title leaves out Catherine, the major force of the film. After this film, the actress Jean Moreau will become a huge star. Her character will shock the audience for many generations. She was viewed as amoral, unhealthy and disturbed, which is not how Truffaut sees her. For Truffaut all of those feelings are equally attributable to love in his opinion. The positive image of love and of the couple is delivered by Jules and Jim. Their status as a couple is illustrated by the alliteration of their names creating a sense identity and unity. They were made for each other. They could finish each other’s sentences. At the end of the film they voice over alludes to them as mythical literary characters. They are compared to Don Quixote and Sancho Pansa. That duo represents honor, chivalry, not unlike our couple, Jules and Jim. They even physically compliment each other, one is tall, and one is short. Jules has brown hair and is French; Jim has blond hair and is German. World War I will be one of the only things that can separate them, but even during that they are concerned with the destructive of the other’s life partner. Even Catherine isn’t success in separating them, she succeeded in creating tension, but basically they will live their love through the mediation of Catherine.
Both male characters are the perfect mirror image of the other. Their comparison to the mythical literary couple of two idealists lost in a world that will crush them makes perfect sense their deep connection and fascination for life and love comes from literature and art. Both are writers, one is a journalist, one is a translator. They each translate the others work. Catherine’s apparent selfishness and cruelty pays tribute to the fact that Jules and Jim are two manifestations of a similar soul. Catherine loses her immoral values once we truly understand who she represents. She represents a heroine, or a goddess. Jules says, “she is unique, she is a queen, she is a Goddess, she is a force of nature.” She separates Jules and Jim just like the war.
When she enters their lives the war starts illustrating her destructive nature. She is the idealized incarnation of the absolute and unreasonable force of desire, passion and love. She is in control of the relationships.She symbolically wins a race against them because she cheats, which is a perfect representation of how she is actually handling the two men. There is constant manipulation that will unfold throughout the film. This scene reinforces this. The race happens on a bridge, which is a universal symbol for change. It clearly foreshadows the end where a bridge is also the place where the race of their lives will end. Catherine chooses Jules as the witness and Jim and her victim and her lover. She chose him because he was the only to resist her power. The last bridge scene is filmed as a ritualistic moment. Catherine says, “watch us, Jules.” The scene that follows seals the God-like nature of Catherine and the ritualistic essence of the trio’s relationship. We have the rite of funeral where Jules pays the last tribute to the two people who represented kinship to him. The voice over very cynically describes the rite of cremation. The camera very coldly films the last rite of his two loves as almost a passionless documentary way. It now seems as if Jules is now free of the bonds of the dual couple.
The ambiguous mix of pain and relief will be very similar to Truffaut’s other films. This tragic moment is rendered in a rather distant way and celebrated by the ironic and pathetic echo of music at the very end. The song is an illustration of her relationship and presence with each one of them. It is a song Catherine hums in the middle of the movie. The film opens with the voice of Catherine reciting a nursery rhyme. “I told you I want you, you told me I love you, you told me please stay, I told you go away.” This is obviously her feelings towards the relationships she has with both men during the film. The camera passes from one face to another, illustrating the lyrics of his song, and finishes by engulfing all of the characters in one shot.
The experimental nature of Catherine’s belief in passion and desire is also matched by the camera of Francois Truffaut. Both bridge scenes are filmed in a similar way. We have a mix of fluidity with tracking shots and brutal cuts and pans. The camera captures the crazed face of Catherine when she runs on the first bridge and when she rides to her death. Both times she has an ecstatic look on her face. The camera turns avant-garde in order to capture the trio’s daring experiment with love and life. The use of still pictures enhances Catherine’s iconic statuesque imagery by suddenly freezing the image and immortalizing her presence. She finally celebrates what both of the men have provided for her in her life; happiness and joy. The voice over never gives us any dates as if time didn’t matter. The constraints of the period piece give us some loose indication. The first twenty minutes of the film develops the kinship of Jules and Jim.
Jules and Catherine had a child, Sabine. So that means Jim and Catherine must have a child, too. A few years after Jim leaves he comes back, and Catherine invites him to her room to start the cycle over again. He refuses and she threatens him with a pistol. Since they try unsuccessfully to create a child they must die together. Because they cannot have this child, their love slowly dies. At the chalet in the mountain a game of faces between the unconventional, happy family breaks out. Sabine, Catherine, Jules and Jim are all there. The voice over says “in the village they called us the cabin of the insane.” Strangely, the daughter, Sabine is almost completely absent from the rest of the film. After providing a mirage for a possible family life for Catherine and Jules the child disappears, even from Jules life. The only instance where time is crucial is when Catherine is over an hour late to her meeting with Jim. He was going to tell her not to marry Jules and that could have changed both of their lives forever, but instead she was late and he left.
The destructive nature of Catherine’s love is illustrated very cleverly by Catherine becoming literally a force of nature during key moments of the film. Time in the film will be a measure of the combustion of love, especially as the film ends with the ashes of the two lovers. She has an uncanny connection with nature. She decides when to live, when to come back to Paris. Her moods are dependant on the weather. She carries with her Sulfuric Acid, which is the perfect fusion of fire and water. She uses it to burn out the eyes of men who lie.
This film is an ode to the irrational, destructive yet profound power of desire, passion, and impossible love from a mythical figure. With this film Truffaut clearly installs one of his crucial obsessions, the fascinating dialogue between the forces of love and the forces of nature and death.