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Jules and Jim

Jules and Jim

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: A golden oldie of a movie
Review: There are some foreign films that have passed into the iconic level in the US, and Jules and Jim is one of them. Directed by François Truffaut, its title comes from the names of 2 guys, best friends, during the Parisian era before the First World War. Jeanne Moreau, looking impossibly young and vulnerable, plays Catherine, the enigmatic woman who enters the relationship between the men, creating a trio from their solid duo. She marries Jules but really never belongs to anyone but herself, remaining always as a passionate, destructive, sensual, and ultimately tragic riddle. And on that fact, the saddness behind this story is delicately balanced. This movie, a masterpiece of New Wave style, is one of Truffaut's best.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Intrigue of Love and Friendship
Review: This classic Truffaut inquiry ranks among the best 100 films made. It explores the evolving friendship of two men and a playful, somewhat distant young woman, tracing innocence and pure joy as they evolve into intrique, infatuation, jealousy and haunted love. In the end, the human spirit is rejoiced.

I'll never forget watching it in my twenties with a friend's wife, of whom I was very smitten. We too shared a tender friendship but never spoke or acted out our deeper attractions.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Truffaut's best?
Review: This film, The Man Who Loved Women, and Stolen Kisses rank as my three favorite Truffaut movies, and I have seen them all except for Such a Gorgeous Kid Like Me. Poor audio and poor image quality may make any other film a waste to purchase on DVD, but not this one. Breathtakingly filmed, acted, and directed, this is one of the best films in movie history. Simply THE best French New Wave film. One aspect of Truffaut's movie direction that is truly his own, is the way the camera will stay on a scene long after the main actors are out of the shot. Most often the camera stays on some other minor characters who have nothing to do with the movie. Little things such as these late cuts are what sets Truffaut above the rest (high above Godard in my opinion). Without Jeanne Moreau, the film would be good but not great. The two male leads are exceptional as well. Films like this one are perfect reasons why all movies should be seen in their widescreen aspect. The scene with Bassiak, Moreau, Werner, and Serre, all on screen at the same time in the cottage is magnificent. It doesn't get much better than this in movie making.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Sexual revenge and loneliness make for a great story.
Review: This is an excellent film. There isn't much to say about it besides that

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Essential
Review: This is only an adequate DVD release (where are the extras?) but at least Fox Lorber acquired a restored print. The movie itself is Truffaut's best in my opinion, with wonderful performances by the three leads.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Perfect Film
Review: This is the only film about sexual emotion anyone anywhere ever needs to watch. It is perfect - it transcends perfection. It is absolute. "She is an apparition, not a woman": this is an apparition, not a "movie".

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Film is great, ... .
Review: This is truly an excellent example of French New Wave cinema. Truffaut uses just the right amount of quick cuts, jump shots, and montages to tell the story of two friends whose lives are changed when a beautiful and independent woman enters their lives. If you love this, you will also love Truffaut's "400 Blows."

Now for ... ...when reviewing a movie such as this, PLEASE DO NOT INCLUDE THE ENDING IN THE REVIEW. Your job is not to summarize the movie from beginning to end; it is to recommend it based on artistics value. What kind of ... gives away the ending in a review? Sheeesh...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The youth's frenzy!
Review: This landmark film is one the best personal achievements of Truffaut and somehow is the second part of The 400 blows in which the dramatic structure narrative concerns. The wonderful storytelling pulse is one of its undeniable virtues.

The idealized world of the golden age and the visible contradictions between the youth surrounding and the oppressive real world are shown with this admirable genius touch that Truffaut owned. Jules and Jim live their own codes and explores everything they want whether is forbidden or not. It is the pleasure and delight of experiencing by itself, his freedom expectations and hallucinating dreams.

Something inside in my mind tells me that the final sequence in Jules and Jim must have influenced the extremely similar ending of Thelma and Louise of Riddley Scott thirty years after.

Coincidence or simple random involuntary manifestations?

One of the quintessential films of the French Wave Cinema!


Rating: 5 stars
Summary: An elegy: the last great film of a Euromodernist tradition.
Review: Time and revisionist critics have tried to tarnish the gleam of Truffaut's final masterpiece - citing its apparent misogyny and apoliticism especially - but for some of us this is the unforgettable film that opened the gates to both Euroepan cinema and the great Americans like Hawks, Hitchcock and Ray.

'Jules et Jim' is, along with 'Citizen Kane', THE great vindication of the pleasures of cinematic form: the first half especially, with its rush of narrative registers and technical exuberance, is unparalled in modern film. this isn't mere trickery - the use of paintings, books, plays, dreams, conversations, documentary footage, as well as the different ways Truffaut uses to tell a story, all point to the film's theme - how do you represent people and the world in art without destroying them? Or, is art the only way to save people and life from destruction?

The foregrounding of theatricality, acting, disguises, pseudonyms, games all point to the high modernism in which the film is set, when the old certainties were being destoyed by the Great War. In fact, the film could be called Cubist in the way it uses film form to splice up images, space, characters, rearranging them in different combinations and from different viewpoints.

Truffaut's film is a beautiful masterpiece about time, the historical time heading towards destruction in the shape of the ..., and the circular time of love, obsession and art. these times struggle in the film's structure, history zipping past years in the framing, Parisian sections, stretching out intolerably in the romantic rural rondelay at its centre.

Far from being misogynistic, Catherine's speech on the beach about 'grains of sand' is the film's philosophical heart. And she's played by Jeanne Moreau, the most honest and human of all great actresses.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Film Which Made Jean Renoir Jealous!
Review: Truffaut's most romantic and ultimately tragic film. It is a revolutionary picture, and a classic in the French film pantheon. A story about friendship, love and especially women. A woman in particular, played by Jeanne Moreau, who becomes the idealized version of the female gender for generations to come. The ending is a knock out, completely surprising, but quite effective.


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