On my note about Vicky Christina Barcelona, I mentioned how it had reminded me of a film I had not seen in years but fondly remembered, Jules and Jim. It turns out my girlfriend, despite having taken film studies had somehow missed this one over the years. A good excuse then to find a copy and become reacquainted with a film which I remembered as whimsical yet moving.
Though she found it less tedious than I, I now saw a film which though it had small moments of brilliance (Truffaut had these great little stop motion bits that somehow just encapsulated moments, literally), was an almost unbearably ludicrous tale of absurdly limited characters (possibly Oskar Werner manages to attain a little dignity near the end). Jeanne Moreau plays an absurdly self possessed woman who is the lamp to the fireflies of the two men who are really not men at all but children.
I still enjoyed the literary quality of the film, having always had some affection for a good voiceover narration. But the character dynamics made no sense to me anymore. All I can say is that I first encountered this film as a teenager, my knowledge of gender relations and my own place in them still unsettled, and the men living to this mercurial woman’s whim seemed somehow desperately romantic to me. Now it seems insane and foolish.
Francois Truffaut had never been one of my favourites; I never found his films to be profound in any way but this I had thought was an exception. Of his compatriots in the French new Wave, I now find Claude Chabrol to be the standout, someone I had previously ignored. See previous notes on his La Ceremonie and Comedy of Power.)
Jean-Luc Godard seemed for the most part too involved in experimentation to ever be able to tell a story, and the others as well still had difficulties moving from being critics to being filmmakers. Chabrol was one of the most genre bound and least radical, and he has emerged as the authentic artist.
Its always a little scary going back to pleasures of earlier times. How many will stand the test of time? Though I feel a little bereaved with examples like Jules and Jim, it is more than made up for by those films or books or cds, that only seem to get better.
Afternote (a day later):
what comes on to the television but Y Tu Mama Tambien. Voice over, two guys one girl and the whole package just leaves Jules and Jim in the dust. The older film just seems lifeless in comparison. Viva la Mexico!!
2 comments ↓
I think you are correct in observing that the men in Jules and Jim seem absurd, but no more so than all the other millions of men who have been attracted (often to their regret) to narcissistic women who reward indulgence with smiles, sex, and more. Truffaut in this film has what literary critics would call a naturalistic style rather than a realistic style. He is examining human beings just as Jules in the film collects and examines insects. This clinical focus may not be as satisfying as the Realistic pervaded with Romanticism that is our usual film fare, but it works on its own terms.
As you point out, it is a little unfair to compare them as being of exactly the same ilk. Yet it is the one film (Y Tu..) that makes me think the other is so limited.
Part of it too is eventually films that one experienced as groundbreaking cinema eventually have to compete as solid films independent of their origins..and that’s where many of these “classics” fail, and the remarkable few, persist.
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