Jules and Jim

Excellent transfer, for a film that is more poetry than prose.
The Criterion edition is a huge improvement over the Fox Lorber version. The picture quality is vastly better, with far less grain and markedly finer resolution; the subtitles are also positioned less obtrusively. I was disturbed by another reviewer's claim that the picture 'shook' - there was no shaking at all with my copy. The transfer was supervised and approved by the director of photography for the film, Raoul Coutard, so it is hardly surprising that it looks good; in some of the darker scenes there is some flickering, but this is hardly a major issue. I actually found the Fox Lorber print difficult and annoying to watch, while the Criterion is completely enjoyable, in fact better than prints I've seen at the cinema.
*
Having seen the film itself several times, I have to admit that on first viewing its great reputation was a bit baffling. My own expectations had been defeated, as I was expecting a film which was at core 'realist'. On subsequent viewings, it became...

The film that changed my life
I was 12 when I saw this on Public television on a Friday night-I sat alone in the TV room in our basement, away from the perpetual chaos of my home life upstairs, and watched it, transfixed. It completely changed how I looked at film, love and just about everything else. It also made me fall in love with everything French-a love affair that has lasted 40 years. I have taken countless people to see this film in art houses and I have bought and given away a few DVDs as well.

Truffaut's storytelling is crisp and clear, and the three actors are sublime. This is a triumph of the spirit and a deeply romantic film. C'est la vie magnifique.

"We played with life and lost."
Francois Truffaut's Jules et Jim was a very popular art-house movie in the early sixties. The black and white French (English subtitled) film follows the friendship of two college students in bohemian Paris beginning in 1912. They meet Catherine, a free spirit who loves to shock people as much as she enjoys both men's love. She marries Jules, but is not satisfied. They reunite with Jim and continue their love triangle.

Jeanne Moreau's Catherine is eternally alluring, selfish, manipulating, and cruel. She is perfect as the siren who plays with men as a cat plays with a mouse. Oscar Werner gives a sympathetic performance as the idealistic and vulnerable Jules, who goes from carefree youth to melancholy middle-age. Henri Serre is well-cast as Jim, more quiet and introspective, yet still helplessly drawn to the enigmatic Catherine.

This is the kind of movie one admires more each time you see it. At first, you are dependent on the subtitles; later you just enjoy the flow of...

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