(my silly review) I really wanted to like this movie, I guess...
...and I have tried to sit through it more than a few times, having sat through some of the greatest, most tedious, and sometimes outright boring films of all time - La Jetee, Joan of Arc, Il Postino, Sunset Boulevard, Atonement, Kahlo, Repulsion...
Don't get me wrong, though, some of the films I've mentioned above are probably liked and loved in many circles, but for the love of me, I just don't get 'Jules and Jim' on those same levels. I get the plot (bohemian life, love, drifting, insanity), but how does the constant negative and subtly boring tone of this film still somehow draw people to it like flies to honey?
I have sat through many of the "classics", and I LOVE many of them - The Searchers, Amarcord, Umberto D, The Third Man (without the horrible cheesy music in it, that could have been Welles' finest since Citizen Kane), - Brazil, etc. - but sometimes many of them also just don't click.
'Jules and Jim' was full of Bohemia from the turn of the century, great - Catherine was the embodiment of what real men have been doing with women since forever (use them and most times lose them afterwards), fine - but this was bland. Oh, god oh so bland. And of course, tedious.
Yes, black and white has a place in film, and yes Truffaut is an artist with the camera and whatever subject matter he has chosen, but this particular subject matter was so dragging and slow, the short running time felt like it was much longer than I expected it to be.
Catherine used her two men well - she was living in a time when a woman still had to be "in her place", but the 1910's and 20's were the perfect time for women everywhere to start becoming enlightened and realize there is more to life than just getting married and settling, and to start growing as a self-made person, just as her character did, and as we find here, most men are indifferent yet still attracted to a woman who wants to do nothing more but be just as independent and sexually self-assured as they are.
Now good lord, Jeanne Moreau took it a bit to far, and is a bit of a psycho here, but she's the only one in the film willing to make anything happen - she has the affairs, she chooses lovers, she picks the resturants and theaters, she does all the impulsive things of youth - it seems she saddled herself with two guys who acted as if they were in their thirties when they were supposed to be in their twenties!
She, as a woman, was still trying to figure out the rules of free living that men have lived in for thousands of years - what to do alone, how to live alone, how to love alone. I give her performance the highest of marks, and although it's no Gena Rolands (Woman On The Verge...), what she did here showed women everywhere in the 1950's that although being free does have a small price, it's worth it. Men are useful to a totally free woman, in their own way.
She carries the film all the way through, and it's a beautiful thing. Granted, she was not the prettiest woman in film at the time, but she held her own, and has since then grown into one of France's premier grand dames of film.
The other two actors? Feh.
In summation, if I was to give this movie any kind of star rating, based on the content, the acting, the sad resolution at the end?
Two stars, tops - and I'm being generous. Jeanne Moreau's playful hurtful insane grandiose subtle work here is 4 stars, and a personal note to Truffaut - the title of this film should really have been called "Catherine," because it's really all about her - and Jules and Jim.