Jules et Jim film review

Jules et Jim is a french film directed by Francois Truffaut in 1962 which was adapted from a novel written by a 75 year old man called Henri Pierre Roche. The film follows the relationship of two men (Jules and Jim) and their involvement with a woman (Catherine), set just before the first world war until the time around the great depression. The film has many time settings and was aimed at the younger generation with Truffaut’s passionate understanding of life and love creating this defining film of the French New Wave.

I found that the scale of time and dominate elements of each period were also shown within the film clearly, this was due to it starting off slowly building up the men's relationship with each other as well as Catherine. It then brought to the audiences attention that both of the men were attracted to Catherine due to her presence and look on life, creating questions in the audiences mind already on how this was going to work out. Then during the middle of the film all the main action occurred the same time as the war would have been happening linking the time period with the elements of the film strongly. Finally at the end there was the loss of characters and others having to rebuild their lives because of the loss which links to the final time period where soldiers are lost and people have had to adapt due to their loss as well  as the depression taking place. I feel that this link worked well as it made you consider the lives of the families and friends and not just making you focus on the life of a soldier.

Within the first few scenes it was clear that the narrator played a major part within the film, bringing all the static shots and freeze frames together to make sense of the story line. Without this the audience would have been left wondering what was going on due to the images jumping time eras at many points throughout, showing the audience flash backs. I also feel that within the narrators speech he hinted about the trouble that was to come which created suspicion in the audiences head drawing them in.

From all of the movies I have watched so far this was the most helpful to reference costume, as I was able to see the changes through out the years with the focus being on every day clothing in that time era instead of the main clothing being the soldiers army suits. This will help me within my research as well as there being more sets and props in the film that i will be able to reference within this project. On the other hand the storyline was not appealing to me and several scenes left me wondering why that event had happened or even laughing as they were so unrealistic at times. This was mainly because I couldn't believe that these events could have happened in real life for example when Catherine was in bed then suddenly pulled a gun out from under the coveres aiming it at Jim. (see image above)

Overall i feel that this film was helpful in terms of the references I took and has helped with my research ideas, however it is not a film I would sit and watch again unless I was finding scenes to show the inspiration I got for my project.