Film Diary: Jules et Jim (François Truffaut, 1962)

Just three years after his low-key but high-emotion début with Les Quatre Cents Coups, Truffaut came up with a masterpiece of restrained sexuality. It's a story of a homosexual relationship, of course, expressed at at time when overt homosexuality was strictly taboo in the cinema. And that's probably the making of Jules et Jim. The relationship between the Austrian Jules and the French Jim develops and grows and wobbles over a long period which encompasses the First World War, in which the two lovers are conscripted on opposing sides and live in fear of killing the other. Their love is expressed, not directly, but through their roller coaster relationship with the wilful older woman Cathérine, who seduces first one then the other and heaven alone knpows how many others. But she is the thread that binds the men together. It's Jeanne Moreau that you remember too. She oozes a refined carnality in a way that no Hollywood star has ever managed.