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Cinema
The return of Jules et Jim
Perhaps the most famous French film ever made has just been re-released by the British Film Institute and is showing at independent cinemas throughout the UK this month. Directed by François Truffaut, Jules et Jim turned Jeanne Moreau into an international star and rocked the traditional relationship in France between men and women to its very foundations.
Difficult though it is to credit this now, back in 1962 when the film was first shown, French banks would still not allow wives to open an account without their husband’s permission. When the film opened, Moreau made many scathing comments about the inequality in French society. She became a role model for many women, someone who interpreted a new kind of femininity, and showed that it was possible to be both beautiful and intelligent.
Paradoxically, however, Jules et Jim is the story of a close male friendship between Jim (Henri Serre), a debonair Frenchman, and Jules (Oscar Werner), an unassuming Austrian, two ambitious writers who meet in the bohemian Paris of 1912. Both compete for the hand of Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) who, capricious to the last, chooses Jules. They marry, have a daughter and after the First World War, in which the friends fight on opposite sides, set up home in the Rhône Valley. But when Jim pays them a visit, the marriage proves unstable and turns into a turbulent ménage à trois.
The film was the high point of what became known as the New Wave, cinema made in real locations, with hand held cameras, and using radical, abrupt editing techniques. Moreau, at 34, immersed herself completely into the rôle, wearing her own clothes (including tight-fitting trousers that turned her into a fashion icon) and dispensing with make-up. She cooked for the crew and when Truffaut ran out of money, put in some of her own.
Now 80, Moreau reminisced about Jules et Jim at the Cannes Festival. “Truffaut and I always knew what the other was thinking. He was able to feel what a woman would feel,” she said. “It was more than a film, a special kind of friendship while we were making it. But then for Truffaut, cinema was more important than life.”
Incredibly, Moreau is still taking on new work. Her latest role is as a grandmother in ‘Later’, a story based around the 1987 trial of Klaus Barbie, who deported many French Jews from Lyon to Nazi Germany. The trial rekindles sad memories for the grandmother, both of whose parents died in a concentration camp. Is this Moreau’s last film? ? “I won’t retire until I can’t remember my lines,” she said.
From our June 2008 e-newsletter
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