The behind-the-scenes production of Jules and Jim

The original author is a 75-year-old French writer. This is his first novel, which has raised a love triangle to an insurmountable height. This film is the most exquisite and touching among Truffaut's works, and it is recommended by many film critics as the best work in his life. The whole movie is filled with a sad and desperate atmosphere of dancing youth but helplessness. In the form of expression, the handling of this film is profound, and the atmosphere in the first half is relaxed and happy. Truffaut is unique through flashback, jumping and freezing. In the second half, the atmosphere turned sharply and became heavy and depressed, indicating that the ideal of love was gradually disillusioned. Questioning the marriage system and pursuing the ideal of free love are the motifs that Truffaut has always emphasized in many of his films. The wonderful description and portrayal of the triangle relationship in the film has become a classic textbook of the same kind of love theme in the history of world movies.

About the movie: dark brown love

Jules and Jim is praised by many critics as the pinnacle of Truffaut's new wave style. In the film, Catherine, Jules and Jim, two men and one woman, form a classic trio in Truffaut style. They sing the utopia of love, read books and games, and talk about the land in Greenwood Manor. This is a typical "new wave" film that denies traditional moral concepts. It tries to overcome some kind of imprisonment and sincerely describes men, women and love, so as to show some hypocrisy. It shows what happens at the real level in reality, rather than being subject to the traditional concept of "good" and "evil". This grasp of reality is described in Truffaut's manifesto: "We should shoot another kind of affairs in another spirit, abandon the expensive studio … and shoot in the street or even in a real house …". The film's description of the three people's love relationship shows the different orientations of each individual from the same starting point, or the same destination from different starting points, or the complicated and intertwined fate of cross-separation. Truffaut's display of this relationship transcends moral judgment, even transcends the director's own era, which marks an ideal realm to overcome the narrowness of human nature, and at the same time implies the questioning of the existing relationship system between men and women. The alternative love in his lens is full of fantasy of love and exploration of the true meaning of love. Although it is not perfect and colorful, it presents a thick brown texture.

As the benefactor and spiritual father of Truffaut's life, Bazin's documentary aesthetics and film views have been thoroughly adhered to and embodied in Truffaut's films, just like an indispensable element in the blood, a philosophy and an innate temperament. Those fragments of life flowing on the screen, Catherine, Jules and Jim galloping on the bridge, walking in the Woods and picking up small things scattered on the ground, freely moving cameras, full-space display, daily conversations, natural scenes, and Truffaut's insistence on documentary aesthetics in technical methods all make us truly feel the connotation that "movies are the asymptote of reality". At the same time, as the founder and representative of "author's film", "making a film is writing" is the slogan of film writers. In Jules and Jim, we see Truffaut's naughty and arbitrary brushwork, just like writing. He used circles to divide the pictures used in early movies, and he let the camera slide freely like eyes. He is not afraid to add chaotic narration to the film.

At the end of the movie, Catherine drove Jim to the broken bridge. In Jules' eyes, the two men fell into the river and died. She defended her beliefs with her death. At that time, Jim had begun to reflect on his youth and whether his actions hurt others. However, Catherine's behavior refused to give Jim a chance to waver. Perhaps what she can't tolerate most is not betrayal of love, but betrayal of the whole life belief. This ending picture is as shocking as the freeze-frame picture at the end of Four Hundred Strikes. These two indescribable love stories, which are full of ideal colors and intertwined, come to an abrupt end with Catherine's calm madness. She planned the incident alone and deprived Jim of his right to appeal. Truffaut made perhaps the best movie of his life, or at least the most ideal movie.

About the director: standing at the fork in the road

From 65438 to 0962, the "new wave" movement quickly slipped to the end in the upsurge and stood at the end of the "new wave". Jules and Jim is a key fork in Truffaut's book. Just like the three characters in the film, Catherine's sharp persistence, Jules' gentleness and tolerance, and Jim's tendency to return to tradition are all gestures and choices. In fact, these Truffles all want to hold them in their arms, but there is only one choice. Therefore, Jim's final transformation means that Truffaut gave up other possibilities, which also means an important change in his film career. Since then, in more than 20 works he continued to shoot, Jim has been absent forever.

The final disagreement between Jules and Jim seems to be a metaphor for the relationship between Truffaut and his opponent Godard, who used to be friends and later became enemies. Godard's answer to the proposition "What is a movie" is: "A movie is the truth of 24 frames per second." He is always looking for movies other than movies, and constantly disintegrating movies in the order of movies. Compared with Godard, Truffaut is always a meaningful contrast. He didn't jump into politics like Godard, but he stayed out of politics until his death, which made his films meaningful and intriguing, although he didn't have Godard's Don Quixote enthusiasm. This obvious difference between them eventually led to a stranger, which became the most metaphorical and sad separation in the history of the "New Wave" movement and even the film.

Truffaut is more easygoing than any director of New Wave. He combines Hollywood genre films, Hitchcock suspense, French literary tradition, popular culture and other elements, and is confident that everything can be dissolved in his firm author style. "I object to the noble and serious Notre Dame Springs and bicycle thieves, while Psycho and the countess's earrings are just entertainment views. These four works are noble, serious and entertaining. " Business and art have never been a pair of paradoxes in Truffaut's life. He closed the gap. Truffaut is not obscure, but easy to read and understand. He is frank and clear at a glance. He injected light and humorous entertainment elements into the most personalized writing films, and printed a distinctive personal mark on the most popular genre films. These qualities became the conscious direction of luc besson and Spielberg. There is an interesting interaction between Truffaut and Hollywood: Truffaut imitates Hollywood genre films; Spielberg admired Truffaut just as Truffaut admired Hitchcock.

Perhaps it is because of Truffaut's fascination with the classic Hollywood narrative with a single linear closed structure, his catering to business and so on. So that his conceptual level and technical documentaries have become the targets of paradox and the "new wave" left. This change is evident in Jules and Jim. Truffaut and Jim overlap here. Jim's signs show that he wants to return to the traditional loyal love and warm family life. He began to slide in the direction he initially opposed, began to take his position less important, and began to consider those different voices and different demands. "There is no correct picture, only the picture is correct." The bifurcation of Jules' and Jim's films divides his film era into revolutionary period and far from revolutionary period. It is no longer revolutionary, but always sincere, and the subtleties may only be understood by Truffaut himself.

Wonderful tidbits

This film is adapted from the autobiographical novel of the same name by Henry Pierre Lodge. Luo Qi was 74 years old when he finished his first novel, and it didn't attract much attention after it was published. When Truffaut was a film critic, he accidentally bought a novel, which surprised him and made him determined to make it into a movie. Later, he used this topic to praise the novel in a film review. Someone cut the film review to rocky, and the old man immediately wrote to Truffaut to thank him. An old man and a young man exchanged geese from then on. While filming Four Hundred Strikes, jeanne moreau visited the class (and made a guest appearance in a scene). Truffaut showed her the novel and sent her photo to the old man. The latter wrote back and agreed that she was the ideal person to play Catherine. But three days before the final shooting of the film, the old man died unfortunately, which became one of the biggest regrets in Truffaut's life.