Jules et Jim et Play

In their book Francois Truffaut(1998) Diana Holmes and Robert Ingram describe Truffaut’s deliberate playful use of the camera. In this scene where the three lovers race across a bridge, they observe that the spectator is made to participate in the race when the camera, “focuses solely on Catherine’s face and ‘runs’ alongside her in a jerky, blurring motion ...” (Holmes & Ingram, 1998, p. 69). Truffaut, Holmes and Ingram note, treats the camera itself as “poetic text” as he uses, "the New Wave techniques of mobile camera, unexpected point-of-view shots, freeze frames, fast editing with a variety of transitional devices,” (p. 68). In Jules et Jim Truffaut captures the essence of the French New Wave aesthetic in which the narrative dictates the form instead of just relaying on a classical narrative structure.