Jules et Jim (1962)
(François Truffaut, France 1962, 105 min., 35mm, French w/English subtitles)
This New Wave triumph tells the tale of two good friends, one French, Jim (Henri Serre), the other Austrian, Jules (Oskar Werner), their shared love for one woman, Jeanne Moreau, and what time and the Great War does to their relationship. Fighting for opposing armies, both men live with the fear of unwittingly killing the other, yet when the warfare subsides, their days are far from peaceful. Truffaut's brilliant adaptation of Henri-Pierre Roche's novel is both an homage to a bygone era and a modern statement on the vitality of life. Shot in Franscope, a system based on the research of German scientist Ernst Abbe, who first wrote about an anamorphic lens system in the late 1890s.