Jules and Jim (1962)

Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) have a special friendship. Maybe it's because they're both writers. Maybe special friendships simply happen for no real reason. They just connect and they're inseparable. Eventually, a couple of things will separate them: A woman and a war.

At first, the woman doesn't separate them. Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) simply joins them. The film might be called Catherine, to be honest, because she is a force, and in some ways, she is the focus of the movie. The movie could also just as easily be called Jules and Catherine and Jim. It's interesting that they leave her name out of the title.

World War I pits Jules and Jim on separate sides. Jules actually happens to like serving on the Russian front, because there he knows he won't accidently kill Jim.

Jules and Catherine marry and have a daughter. Catherine, however, is not the marrying type. She lives her life as an experiment. Maybe she was curious to see what being a wife and mother was like. That doesn't mean she has the personality to treat it as a permanent position. Even when she's married to Jules, she finds the restraints of a traditional marriage too confining. She will stay married to Jules, but she wants more.

Jules, on the other hand, only wants Catherine, and he's willing to put up with whatever she does. Eventually, she wants Jim, and Jules gives his blessing, because it means he will at least be able to stay in close contact with Catherine.

And then, Catherine shows what she's capable of. The ending should not come as a great surprise, and you'd think that both Jim and Jules would recognize that Catherine is, at best, unstable. Maybe they're caught up in her current and can't escape her pull.

This isn't a horror movie, but when I think of Truffaut, I think of his connection to Hitchcock, and I think of the ending to this film.

Minor observation: Oskar Werner kind of looks like Owen Wilson and a young William F. Buckley. His character, Jules, was not a guy who easily got with women. Catherine had no trouble landing men. I wonder if that was the main attraction for Jules: That she chose him?

Rating: 4/5 stars

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