François Truffaut

Jules and Jim

Jules and Jim

Hailed as one of the finest films ever made, Jules and Jim charts, over twenty-five years, the relationship between two friends and the object of their mutual obsession. The legendary François Truffaut directs, and Jeanne Moreau stars as the alluring and willful Catherine, whose enigmatic smile and passionate nature lure Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) into one of cinema’s most captivating romantic triangles. An exuberant and poignant meditation on freedom, loyalty, and the fortitude of love, Jules and Jim was a worldwide smash in 1962 and remains every bit as audacious and entrancing today.

Film Info

  • France
  • 1962
  • 106 minutes
  • Black & White
  • 2.35:1
  • French
  • Spine #281

Special Features

  • New, restored 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Two audio commentaries: one featuring coscreenwriter Jean Gruault, longtime François Truffaut collaborator Suzanne Schiffman, editor Claudine Bouché, and film scholar Annette Insdorf; the other featuring actor Jeanne Moreau and Truffaut biographer Serge Toubiana
  • Excerpts from The Key to “Jules and Jim” (1985), a documentary about author Henri-Pierre Roché and the real-life relationships that inspired the novel and film
  • Interviews with Gruault and cinematographer Raoul Coutard
  • Conversation between film scholars Robert Stam and Dudley Andrew
  • Excerpt from a 1965 episode of the French TV program Cinéastes de notre temps dedicated to Truffaut
  • Segment from a 1969 episode of the French TV show L’invité du dimanche featuring Truffaut, Moreau, and filmmaker Jean Renoir
  • Excerpts from Truffaut’s first appearance on American television, a 1977 interview with New York Film Festival director Richard Roud
  • Excerpts from a 1979 American Film Institute seminar given by Truffaut
  • Audio interview with Truffaut from 1980
  • Trailer
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic John Powers, a 1981 piece by Truffaut on Roché, and script notes from Truffaut to Gruault

    New cover by David Downton

Purchase Options

Collector's Sets

Collector's Set

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films

Essential Art House: 50 Years of Janus Films

DVD Box Set

50 Discs

$650.00

Out Of Print

Special Features

  • New, restored 2K digital restoration, with uncompressed monaural soundtrack on the Blu-ray
  • Two audio commentaries: one featuring coscreenwriter Jean Gruault, longtime François Truffaut collaborator Suzanne Schiffman, editor Claudine Bouché, and film scholar Annette Insdorf; the other featuring actor Jeanne Moreau and Truffaut biographer Serge Toubiana
  • Excerpts from The Key to “Jules and Jim” (1985), a documentary about author Henri-Pierre Roché and the real-life relationships that inspired the novel and film
  • Interviews with Gruault and cinematographer Raoul Coutard
  • Conversation between film scholars Robert Stam and Dudley Andrew
  • Excerpt from a 1965 episode of the French TV program Cinéastes de notre temps dedicated to Truffaut
  • Segment from a 1969 episode of the French TV show L’invité du dimanche featuring Truffaut, Moreau, and filmmaker Jean Renoir
  • Excerpts from Truffaut’s first appearance on American television, a 1977 interview with New York Film Festival director Richard Roud
  • Excerpts from a 1979 American Film Institute seminar given by Truffaut
  • Audio interview with Truffaut from 1980
  • Trailer
  • PLUS: A booklet featuring an essay by critic John Powers, a 1981 piece by Truffaut on Roché, and script notes from Truffaut to Gruault

    New cover by David Downton
Jules and Jim
Cast
Jeanne Moreau
Catherine
Oskar Werner
Jules
Henri Serre
Jim
Vanna Urbino
Gilberte
Bassiak
Albert
Anny Nelsen
Lucie
Sabine Haudepin
Sabine
Marie Dubois
Thèrèse
Michel Subor
Voice
Credits
Director
François Truffaut
Based on the book by
Henri-Pierre Roché
Adaptation and dialogue
Jean Gruault
Adaptation and dialogue
François Truffaut
Photography
Raoul Coutard
Edited by
Claudine Bouché
Music
Georges Delerue

Current

François Truffaut, Original Auteur
François Truffaut, Original Auteur
Who better to explain what an auteur of the cinema is than one of the originators of auteur theory? In his famous 1954 essay “A Certain Tendency in French Cinema,” published in Cahiers du cinéma five years before the release of his first feature…
On Jules and Jim
On Jules and Jim
When François Truffaut was a twenty-three-year-old film critic, in 1955, he read an autobiographical first novel by a seventy-four-year-old writer, Henri-Pierre Roché. “The book overwhelmed me,” he later recalled, “and I wrote: If I ever succ…

By John Powers

Visits with Raoul Coutard
Visits with Raoul Coutard

Last week, we were saddened to learn of the passing of Raoul Coutard. Our technical director, Lee Kline, shared some memories of working with the great cinematographer.


By Lee Kline

Josephine Decker’s Top 10
Josephine Decker’s Top 10

The director of Madeline’s Madeline and Shirley chooses a selection of old favorites that combine beauty with ugliness, the logical with the irrational.

Christophe Honoré’s Top 10
Christophe Honoré’s Top 10

The wildly prolific French director, novelist, and playwright celebrates the films that bring him pleasure and confound his understanding.

Keeper of the Secret: Remembering Jeanne Moreau
Keeper of the Secret: Remembering Jeanne Moreau

French New Wave icon Jeanne Moreau possessed a stillness, a way of surrendering to the camera, that made her utterly unique among modern actors.

By Terrence Rafferty

Explore

François Truffaut

Director

François Truffaut
François Truffaut

A lifelong cinephile, François Truffaut first made his cinematic mark as a fiery, contentious critic for Cahiers du cinéma in the 1950s, denouncing the French film industry's bloated "tradition of quality" and calling for the director to be redefined as the auteur, or individual author, of the film. Truffaut then became an auteur himself, starting with The 400 Blows, which won him the best director award at Cannes and led the French new-wave charge. The 400 Blows remains Truffaut’s seminal film, yet he continued to reinvigorate cinema throughout the sixties, with such thrilling works as Shoot the Piano Player and Jules and Jim. Truffaut also continued to follow the adventures of 400 Blows protagonist Antoine Doinel—embodied by Jean-Pierre Léaud—through the seventies (Stolen Kisses, Bed and Board, Love on the Run), while directing such other classics as Day for Night and The Last Metro, which displayed his undying love for cinema and life. His own life was tragically cut short at the age of fifty-two.