Let's be realistic.

I am only giving this movie a 1 for the great cast, though I can't imagine what any of them were thinking. This movie was horrible

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

Spoilers. Observations. Opinions.Powerful. Smashing. Elegant.Saw this once before. Remembered the two men involved with one woman. Wanted to see it again, many years later.Daring story for the time. Manizing woman, not womanizing man, even though the men had seen other women. This time, her affairs are described, and she wants to stay free and easy, untied permanently to anyone. Jeanne Moreau is the star of this film, not the two men.She keeps paying the two main men back for their transgressions against her, and at the end makes a final payback again to both of them. Score one, two and three, but this time it is fatal.Jules is scratching his head at what to make of the whole thing. I don't see any tears, however. He makes sure that the other two in the triangle are sleeping side by side for all eternity. But what about the little girl? We don't see her near or at the end.Teutonic men may not make the greatest lovers. They are known to have an iceberg instead of a heart, and can be very selfish. They can be quite cold and heartless, but French men are well known for making women very happy in many ways. Paired with a French woman, Jim did better than did Jules. Jules couldn't keep women early on, and before he met Catherine he decided to take up with the pros. He couldn't even keep Catherine after he married her. She was way too much for him. Jim, however, had no problem attracting tons of eager women surrounding his newfound enchantment with Catherine. You never saw Jim hooking up with prostitutes.RIP Jeanne Moreau. I remember her grande dame from Ever After, in which at the beginning of the film she tells the Grimm Brothers that Cinderella was a real person, and her own great- or great-great-grandmother. The film goes on to show Drew Barrymore as a new filmic version of Cinderella, kicking butt of a hottie Prince Charming. Leonardo da Vinci even appears in this film, as a good friend of the future princess.Oskar Werner I remember from Ship of Fools and Fahrenheit 451. In real life, he was in the Nazi army of World War Two, although as an actual pacifist feigning incompetence and wanting KP duty even though his blonde hair made him an ideal Aryan specimen. His real heart lay in acting in the theatre, not in fighting on the battle front. His early theatrical career had been interrupted by the war.I am a degreed historian from the university, and am still involved in taking coursework in film history and war studies. I study the lives of actors and actresses, both stage and screen. I am an actress, dancer, singer, makeup artist, fashion designer, film critic and movie reviewer. I have critiqued almost 400 films and TV shows for IMDb since 2002.

The basis for this movie is a love triangle between two friends (Oskar Werner as Jim and Henri Serre as Jules) and a free-spirited young woman (Jeanne Moreau as Catherine). It's a joy to watch, all three actors are fantastic, and the 'New Wave' filmmaking by Francois Truffaut is very creative,with brilliant sequences which make it clear that he had an influence on Wes Anderson. It was only his third movie, and there is a freshness about it, with several iconic scenes including the ending, but I won't spoil it. The movie captures universal truths about relationships, while at the same time highlighting the very French attitude towards affairs. Never slow, and definitely worth watching.

Decades of a love triangle concerning two friends and an impulsive woman (Jeanne Moreau).The film is based on Henri-Pierre Roché's 1953 semi-autobiographical novel describing his relationship with young writer Franz Hessel and Helen Grund, whom Hessel married. Truffaut came across the book in the mid-1950s whilst browsing through some secondhand books at a bookseller along the Seine in Paris. Later he befriended the elderly Roché, who had published his first novel at the age of 74. The author approved of the young director's interest to adapt his work to another medium.The movie has been called "an inventive encyclopedia of the language of cinema", as Truffaut incorporated newsreel footage, photographic stills, freeze frames, panning shots, wipes, masking, dolly shots, and voice-over narration (by Michel Subor). Today, the influence continues in everything from "Goodfellas" to "Pulp Fiction" to "Life Aquatic" (three films you would not expect).

It's around 1912 Paris. Austrian Jules asks Jim to get him into the Quatres Arts Ball. That's the beginning of their friendship. They meet many women including Thérèse and Catherine. Catherine reminds them of a statue that they love and the three become inseparable. Jules goes home to Austria to marry Catherine but war breaks out a few days later and both men are called up. After the war, Jim go to visit Jules and Catherine who now has a daughter named Sabine. Their relationship is troubled. Catherine and Jim start their own relationship and the three friends stay together. But the stability doesn't last. Director François Truffaut brings a complicated personal relationship. These are compelling characters especially Catherine. Actually I think the one big mistake is to leave her out of the title. These interconnected doomed relationships are beautiful.