Catherine’s smile through cinematography, montage and dialogue in Jules and Jim .

                                                        

Jules and Jim (1962), François Truffaut's third film has a plethora of cinematic techniques typical of the Nouvelle Vague, that years later Truffaut said he found embarrassing. He especially felt that the panning shots were too fast and noticeable. His later films cinematically were more reserved and visually similar to  most Hollywood films

Albert, an artist shows Jules and Jim lantern slides of ancient statues. At first the slides are shown slowly and we see Albert load the slides into a turn of the Century projector. We are aware of how much time is necessary to load and pull each slide in front of the lamp. After the slide appears on the screen there is a lateral oscillation of the image before it stops moving. This gentle oscillation will become more pronounced when they visit the statue.

(Albert Speaking)

I like this one very much.  

It has beautiful lips. 

A bit scornful.

Beautiful eyes, too.

A rapid succession of slides appear on Albert’s linen screen… an extreme close-up, a profile, and images of her nose and mouth. It is impossible for his lantern to project the slides that fast. The rapid editing has disrupted the movie. The voice over narration provides their reaction.    

The tranquil smile on the crudely sculpted face mesmerized them.

In the next scene Jules and Jim are descending an outdoor stairway to see the statue at an outdoor museum on an Adriatic island. The camera pans around the garden looking for the statue. The panning is done in silence.

They spent an hour by the statue.

It exceeded their expectations.

After the camera finds the statue that they are searching for, the simple panning becomes more complicated as will Jules and Jim’s lives after they become involved with Catherine. There is a tracking-zoom shot where the statue appears closer while the background recedes. Next is a track to the right with a pan to the left to keep the statue in center screen as we view more of the left side of her face. The process reverses from a different starting point so we can see the right side of her face. The voice over describes the camera movement, the silence, and their reaction to her smile.

They walked rapidly around it in silence.

They didn’t speak of it to the next day.

Had they ever met such a smile?

Never.

And if they ever met it, they’d follow it.

Jules and Jim returned home full of this revelation.

Jules has arranged for three girls to have an outdoor dinner with them. The first detail the narrator provides is about Catherine’s smile.   

Catherine, the French girl, had the smile of the statue on the island.

Her nose, mouth, chin, and forehead bore the nobility of a province she personified as a child in a religious ceremony. It started like a dream.

When Catherine first appears on screen, she is visually linked to the statue with similar excited camera movements and editing. She descends outdoor steps just like Jules and Jim descended outdoor steps to get to the outdoor statues. There also is silence as she starts her descent and her face gets closer to the camera. After she lifts her veil to reveal her face there are quick cuts, some with fast zooms, of alternating profiles and full-face close-ups. She becomes an incarnation of Jules and Jim’s objet d’art.

During the dinner there is a reduced sized frame that is not wide screen, of a medium close up of Jules and Catherine sipping wine.                                    

A shy, happy smile played on Jules lips and told the others he held them in his heart.

The theme of smiling recurs when Jules and Jim are playing dominoes and Catherine feels she is being ignored.

I believe I just said something funny. In any case amusing. You might at least smile… I never laughed before I met you two. I always looked like this.

She then makes several poses with sad faces that are freeze-framed.

But that’s over for good. Now it’s like this.

She then makes smiling poses that are freeze- framed. Jules and Jim want to remember Catherine as the statue but real life doesn’t allow time to stop. The camera allows us to see what Jules and Jim desire.

After a race through a pedestrian overpass that Catherine won by cheating with a head start, the narrator provides information about their relationship.

Jim considered her to be Jules’ and didn’t try to form a clear picture of her. Catherine once again wore that calm smile. It came naturally to her and expressed everything about her.

After they saw a play and they are walking along the Seine, Catherine becomes upset that the men are talking about the play and ignoring her. Jules’ opinion that the most important factor in a couple is the fidelity of the woman intensifies her anger. She wants to be like the heroine in the play “who invents her whole life at every moment.”  She protests and jumps in the Seine. After she is in the cab, the narrator provides the interpretation for the viewer.

          Jules was pale, silent, unsure of himself, and more handsome.

Catherine wore her same smile, like a modest general after his first brilliant campaign

After the war there is only one mention of Catherine’s smile.  It is late in the film after tensions between Jim and Catherine arise because of their inability to have a child, Jim’s previous absence from Catherine, her pregnancy that Jim believes is Albert’s, and her miscarriage. She became severely depressed. Jim goes to visit Jules and Catherine at their house on the Seine. As they are preparing for an outing the narrator comments about the sincerity of her smile.

            Catherine was smiling, but she had a look of intrigue about her.

The voice over describes the camera movement, the silence, and their reaction to her smile. Her behavior becomes erratic as she drives her car around the sidewalk. In a bedroom scene, when Jim tells her he will marry Giberte, she feigns a smile before she starts crying, goes into a rage and takes a pistol to attempt to kill Jim. Albert’s initial description of the statues lips as “A bit scornful” has become one major understatement.

The Belle Époque when the three first met was disrupted by the First World War. A new horror is on the horizon. Nazi book burning is shown in a newsreel that they are watching. Could the trio live through the coming horror?  Catherine kills herself and Jim as she drives her car from a bridge while Jules is nearby watching.