Jules and Jim

A seminal movie from the French New Wave, François Truffaut's hugely influential Jules et Jim is based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Henri-Pierre Roché and stars Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Wener and Henri Serre in a life-long love triangle.

After meeting in 1912, friends Jules (Werner) and Jim (Serre) meet the flirty and flighty Catherine (Moreau). Both men fall for her, but she picks Jules and soon they're married. The First World War finds the men fighting on opposite sides. After the war, Jim visits the married couple in Germany and finds that although they now have a daughter, their marriage is failing and Catherine has been unfaithful. When she makes Jim her next target, Jules asks his best friend to marry her, so that she can stay in his life. Said the BBC: "This is a painfully moving story about uncompromising friendship and uncontrollable love - not so much unrequited as undeserving and unfulfilled."

Along with the free-flowing narrative and natural performances, Truffaut embraced inventive techniques (absent from larger productions) such as freeze frames, jump cuts, use of newsreel footage and use of handheld, lightweight cameras.

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