Jules et Jim revisited

Tonight I re-watched Jules et Jim, a choice made after spotting the excellent poster at a coffee shop (excellent because it depicts Catherine, not the titulary Jules and Jim.... clever), and realizing I had large gaps in my memory to refill.
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The film is a free-spirited rendition of sweet and free going sour and confined, on many levels. It's a radiant reminder that cinematic freedom can be exercised in every department, and meaningfully. 

Truffaut embraces contradiction to create meaning—Jules and Jim is sad yet humorous, breathless yet contemplative, universal yet hermetic, based on a book by a man in his 70s yet directed by a man in his 20s. It knows of life's folly so intimately that it is impossibly naïve, and its selfless love of the cinema borders on narcissistic.

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This is not a great film because it equals the sum of its parts, but because it so fully embodies the altruism of its maker. It represents some of the first and most essential steps into a new age of filmmaking, one that you wish would endure still.

- Chuck Rudolph, for Slant Magazine