MOVIE CHRONICLE
577
theme and spirit of the film: Jules and Jim and Catherine are the
ones who "make their way in life's whirlpool of days-round and round
together bound." And, in the film, the song is an epiphany: when
Catherine sings, the story is crystallized, and the song, like Jim and the
child rolling on the hill, seems to belong to memory almost before it is
over. In the same way, the still shots catch for us, as for the characters,
the distillation, the beauty of the moment. Throughout the film, George
Delerue's exquisite music-simple and fragrant, popular without being
banal-is part of the atmosphere; it is so evocative that if you put
the music on the phonograph, like the little phrase from Vinteuil's
sonata, it brings back the images, the emotions, the experience.
Though emotionally in the tradition of Jean Renoir, as a work of
film craftsmanship
Jules and Jim
is an homage to D. W. Griffith.
Truffaut explores the medium, plays with it, overlaps scenes, uses fast
cutting in the manner of
Breathless,
changes the size and shape of the
images as Griffith did, and in one glorious act of homage he recreates
a frame out of
Intolerance. Jules a;nd Jim
is the most exciting movie
made in the west since
L'Avventura
and
Breathless
and Truffaut's
earlier
Shoot the Piano Player;
because of the beauty and warmth of its
images, it is a richer, a more satisfying film than any of them. I think
it will rank among the great lyric achievements of the screen, right up
there with the work of Griffith and Renoir.
Pauline Kael
RICHARD CHASE 1915-1962
We are saddened
by
the death of Richard Chase,
who had written often for this periodical.
