go to WASHINGTON FREE PRESS HOME (subscribe, contacts, archives, latest, etc.)

Sept/Oct 2000 issue (#47)

Jules and Jim and Eve
September 14-27, The Little Theater, 608-19th Ave E Seattle, 206-675-2055, www.wigglyworld.org

Moreau (left) in Eve. Simultaneously dominant and vulnerable.

In Francois Truffaut's New Wave French classic, Jules and Jim, Jeanne Moreau-- playing the quintessential femme fatale Catherine-- says, "One is never completely in for love for more than a moment." But it seems film has been in love with Jeanne Moreau for nearly fifty years. She has starred in over two dozen films and wowed a few of the greatest directors in the business, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Orson Welles, Roger Vadim and Michelangelo Antonioni.

At 72, Jeanne Moreau is still going strong: after more than 20 years since directing Le Adolescente in 1979, this October Moreau will step behind the camera and direct a script written for her by Jean Renoir and starring Juliette Binoche. This past February, Moreau was presented with a lifetime achievement award from the Berlin International Film Festival. And although the public has loved her for decades, for a brief two weeks the Little Theater will screen two movies starring Moreau.

Beginning the series is Jules and Jim. While the film is named after the men in the movie, Catherine/Moreau is certainly the star. Derek Malcolm of the Guardian wrote: "Jeanne Moreau was the perfect choice for Catherine: she gives a performance full of gaiety and charm without conveying an empty-headed bimbo. She makes the watcher understand that this is no ordinary woman whom both men adore. It is possibly the most complete character in the entire oeuvre of the New Wave...." Moreau wonderfully portrays Catherine as a dangerously romantic, flirtatious, self-destructive, flighty woman who captures the thin lines of love and friendship and human destruction. Moreau said of Catherine "She's not immoral. She's absolute."

The film, set in Paris, begins at the end of the Belle Epoque and ends at the time of the Great Depression and Hitler's rise. Truffaut captures the demise of the infamous menage a trois through the historical narration. Nearly forty years since it's debut, Jules and Jim remains one of the finest films capturing the political and the personal of love and madness, friendship and romance. Pauline Kael wrote that Jules and Jim is "Elliptical, full of wit and radiance, this is the best movie ever made about what most of us think of as the Scott Fitzgerald period."

It's a long awaited revival and an opportunity to not to be missed when Joseph Losey's Eve plays at the Little Theater beginning September 21. Because Eve never received much critical attention when it was originally released (1963), it's not easy to find much information or critiques of it. It's virtually impossible to find it on video and isn't available for a pre-screening, so it is a rare opportunity to see it on the full screen. Losey has an intriguing background: after studying medicine at Dartmouth and English Literature at Harvard, Losey moved to Germany to study with Bertolt Brecht. Before breaking into film after the war, Losey directed plays in New York.

One possible factor in the little attention Eve received could be because during the McCarthy era Losey was named a member of the Communist Party by the House of Un-American Activities Committee. After refusing to answer any of the parties questions and ultimately being blacklisted in Hollywood, Losey moved to England where he continued with films such as The Assassination of Trotsky(1972). In Eve, Moreau again fulfills her femme fatale in all it's glamour as portraying Eve as simultaneously sensual, sensitive, dominant and vulnerable. With Moreau, as one critic wrote, portraying "the personification of evil," the restored visuals and fabulous jazz-based score, the screening of Eve should not be missed.

Jeanne Moreau Filmography

I Love You I Love You Not, Old Lady Who Walked in the Sea, Proprietor, Elevator to the Gallows (1957), Frantic (1958), Lovers (1958), Dangerous Liaisons (1960), Jules and Jim (1961), Fire Within (1963), Trial (1963), Diary of a Chambermaid (1964), Train (1965), Viva Maria (1965), Yellow Rolls Royce (1965), Mademoiselle (1966), Chimes at Midnight/Falstaff (1967), Oldest Profession (1967), Bride Wore Black (1968), Little Theater of Jean Renoir (1969), Alex in Wonderland (1970), Monte Walsh (1970), Going Places (1974), Mr. Klein (1975), Lumiere (1976), Last Tycoon (1977), Heat of Desire (1983), Querelle (1983), Your Ticket Is No Longer Valid (1984), La Femme Nikita (1990), Until the End of the World (1991), Alberto Express (1992).