François Truffaut’s Jules and Jim and the French New Wave, Re-viewed

 Truffaut’s early protagonists, like many of those produced by the New Wave, were rebels or misfits who felt stifled by conventional social definitions. His early cinematic style was as anxious to rip chords as his characters were. Unlike Godard, Truffaut went on in his career to commit himself, not to continued experiment in film form or radical critique of visual imagery, but to formal themes like art and life, film and fiction, and art and education. This article reconsiders a film that embodies such themes, in addition to featuring characters who feel stifled by conventional social definitions: Jules and Jim.