[Jules et Jim] is very much a conscious attempt on Truffaut's part to make a synthesis of his first two films: to combine the "big" subject with obvious human significance of Les Quatre Cents Coups with what he calls the "plastic enterprise" of Shoot the Pianist….

Friendship, Truffaut seems to be saying, is rarer and more precious than love. Or perhaps he is also saying that friendship, not being as natural or as innate as sex relationships, must always be destroyed by the forces of nature re-asserting themselves—just as in Goethe's Elective Affinities, to which several references are made in the film, the wilderness is always waiting to destory the carefully nurtured garden.

Shoot the Pianist moved back and forth between comedy and tragedy with intoxicating brio. In Jules et Jim both elements are constantly present, one within the other, as in a chemical suspension. Although the...