| Jules et Jim (François Truffaut, 1962) |
[Jul. 5th, 2009|12:12 pm] |
Things I noticed on second viewing:
The part in which Jules, Jim, and Catherine rent that country house and they're walking to the beach. They keep finding objects on the ground which they then pick up, examine, and then throw: a shoe, a pack of English cigarettes. Coutard's camera frantically surveying the scene. Not sure what was happening there. Showing how young and without history they are compared to others who have passed through the place?
The role of Goethe's Elective Affinities in the film.
The scene in which Jules sees Jim and Catherine acting like a couple for the first time and he speaks (quotes Goethe, I think) German and makes Catherine translate. I can't find the quote but that was nicely done. The direction was incredible: shifting from floor to floor, from window to window. The isolated country houses and the roaming, airborne camera.
Georges Delerue's score seems to play a few bars of "Lili Marleen" as Jules retreats from the frame alone at the tragic end. I really nice touch because Jules and Jim represent both the German and French side and that song became popular on both sides of the WWII conflict. Further it points to the fact that, although love is tragic, the true horror is yet to come. It's intense that the last time the Jules, Jim and Catherine happen to run into each other it's in a cinema watching newsreels of Nazi book burning.
"Did you like her?" Erika asked after the movie and I think I said no. But I wonder if maybe I do? I did stop to ponder the amount of misogyny in Truffaut's characterization of Catherine as "a real woman": instable, prone to hysterical fits of irrational behaviour, a "force of nature". Yet Truffaut allows her more complexity than that. When Jules is quoting sexist passages from books and writers (including Baudelaire pondering why women should even be allowed in churches) she admonishes Jim for not protesting.
"I do not agree with everything Jules says at 2 in the morning."
She throws herself into the water in protest. |
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