Part of Love Week
Hailed as one of the finest films ever made, JULES AND JIM charts, over 25 years, the relationship between two friends and the object of their mutual obsession. The legendary François Truffaut directs, and Jeanne Moreau stars as the alluring and willful Catherine, whose enigmatic smile and passionate nature lure Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) into one of cinema’s most captivating romantic triangles. An exuberant and poignant meditation on freedom, loyalty and the fortitude of love, JULES AND JIM was a worldwide smash in 1962 and remains every bit as audacious and entrancing today.
“François Truffaut's beautiful 1961 film concerns two friends, the German Jules (Oskar Werner) and the Frenchman Jim (Henri Serre), in the years surrounding World War I, and the maddeningly willful woman, Catherine (the unforgettable Jeanne Moreau), whom they both love. (Stanley Kauffman once described it as the story of an isosceles triangle that gradually becomes equilateral.) Like the director's later TWO ENGLISH GIRLS — another film about a doomed love triangle, also adapted from an Henri-Pierre Roché novel — this film about the ultimate impossibility of lasting romantic love is among the most romantic movies ever made.” —Jim Ridley, Nashville Scene (May 5, 2005) “There is joy in the filmmaking that feels fresh today and felt audacious at the time…. One of those rare films that knows how fast audiences can think, and how emotions contain their own explanations.” —Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times “What’s striking some 50 years after the release of JULES AND JIM is the rather unambiguous queer subtext that runs throughout…The indifference with which they relinquish possession of Catherine, an altogether anomalous concession of masculinity, particular at that time, underscores that their primary interest has always been in one another.” —Excerpt from ”A Queer Reading of François Truffaut’s Masterpiece” —John Oursler, Pop Matters
