One of the reasons for moving to a 12 film season was to make room for the occasional classic. OK, this season we have two. Here is the first of them. Classic French New Wave.

Synopsis – In Paris, before World War I, two friends, introvert Austrian Jules and extrovert Frenchman Jim. After encounters with several women, they both fall in love with the bohemian, force of nature, Catherine. When the war starts, Catherine marries Jules and they move to Austria. Both men fight in the war, fearful that they will kill their friend. When the three meet again after the War, Catherine decides she loves Jim. The original love triangle.

The film – French New Wave an art film movement that emerged in the late 1950s, characterized by its rejection of traditional conventions in favour of experimentation, including editing, visual style, and narrative. The term was first used by a group of French film critics and cinephiles who rejected the tradition de qualité of mainstream French cinema, which emphasized craft over innovation and old works over experimentation. This was apparent in a 1954 essay by Truffaut Une certaine tendance du cinéma français, where he denounced the adaptation of safe literary works into unimaginative films. Using portable equipment and requiring little or no set up time, the New Wave way of filmmaking often presented a documentary style of fragmented, discontinuous editing, and long takes which is seen in this film.

Links – Guardian review imdb

Director/Writer – François Truffaut, adapted from a novel by Henri-Pierre Roché, Cinematography – Raoul Coutard France, 1962, 105 mins, X, B&W.