Thanks to all who participated in our Summer 2020 series! The discussion series is now concluded, but you can still watch the video-taped introductions by our film experts and the films on your own time. Throw a DIY watch party! For more information on the series: Virtual International Film Festival.

Video introduction by SHASS faculty for each film are available to the public. Links to the featured films are open to current MIT students, faculty and staff.

Introduction to the film

By Edward Baron Turk

Watch the film

Watch the film here: Jules et Jim

About the film

Turk’s pick is: Jules et Jim directed by François Truffaut, The Criterion Collection (1962).

Hailed as one of the finest films ever made, Jules et Jim charts, over twenty-five years, the relationship between two friends and the object of their mutual obsession. The legendary Francois Truffaut directs, and Jeanne Moreau stars as the alluring and willful Catherine, whose enigmatic smile and passionate nature lure Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) into one of cinema’s most captivating romantic triangles. An exuberant and poignant meditation on freedom, loyalty, and the fortitude of love, Jules and Jim was a worldwide smash in 1962 and remains every bit as audacious and entrancing today. The film speaks to issues of gender roles, female sexuality, homosociality, and same-sex love.

Country of Origin: France. Genre: New Wave romantic drama film. Awards: BAFTA, Bodil Awards, Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists, Cahiers du cinéma, Mar del Plata Film Festival.

Trailer

Bonus

Ed Turk: Introduction to the French New Wave

 

Speakers

  • John E. Burchard Professor Emeritus of the Humanities

Edward Baron Turk is the John E. Burchard Professor Emeritus of the Humanities at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he taught film, theater, and comparative media studies from 1978 through 2012.