Jules and Jim Analysis

 Jules and Jim (1962)

Directed by: Francois Truffaut
A key film in the French New Wave - Nouvelle Vague
Ranked 46 in Empire magazine's "The 100 Best Films Of World Cinema" in 2010

Before discussing about the content, I want to discuss the form of the film because I loved the film because of the style more than the substance. The film has extensive usage of voice over narrated by a third person, and the visuals are fastly cut matching to the voice over. This style has influenced a lot of filmmakers including Martin Scorsese - it defined his style of the opening scene of Goodfellas - which in turn influenced a lot of filmmakers across the globe. The usage of voice over in the film doesn't disregard the idea that film is a visual medium - here they play around with the visuals by matching them to the voice over, the visuals and the voice over complete each other - you can't just hear the film and feel the same. Even Noah Baumbach explained how Jules and Jim was his inspiration for the entire opening sequence of Marriage Story. The fluidity in the camera was also visually striking.

The premise of this film, is similar to the Arya series by Sukumar. Set around World War -1, two guy friends Jules and Jim meet Catherine and she initially starts dating Jules, but even Jim is interested in her. Catherine, I felt was the central controlling idea of the film because if Catherine wasn't who she is, then there wouldn't be any conflict in the film. Usually with such iconoclast characters, the ending is the defeat/death of them - in this film it's death but it also includes murder - it's not that they are arrested or killed by the police, at the end Catherine does what she wants, and this ending states the worldview of the filmmaker for how he roots for anarchy. Jules and Jim are more accessible characters and are just tools for the filmmaker to show us who Catherine is, as a person.