On Loca­tion: The bridge from Jules et Jim

If asked to think of a sin­gle image that defines French New Wave cin­e­ma, it’s like­ly that the most com­mon answer would be that of three lovers run­ning across a bridge. The run­ners are two men and a woman, though the woman is dressed in bag­gy men’s cloth­ing. They hop and skip in a care­free fash­ion down some steps towards a nar­row walk­way above a cacoph­o­ny of rail­way lines before sprint­ing to the oppo­site end.

The scene is from François Truffaut’s third fea­ture film from 1962, Jules et Jim, and show­cas­es every­thing that made the Nou­velle Vague a breath of fresh air: youth, ener­getic cam­er­a­work and emo­tion­al detail all ren­dered with­in an end­less­ly cool visu­al style. Anoth­er dom­i­nate aspect of the Nou­velle Vague, tak­en in part from the ciné­ma vérité move­ment, is the use of real loca­tions over sets, Jules et Jim being typ­i­cal in its exten­sive use of a vari­ety of locales.

The film con­tains one of cinema’s most famous ménage-a-trois. We fol­low a pair of friends from the film’s title, Jules (Oskar Wern­er), a shy Aus­tri­an writer, and Jim (Hen­ri Serre), an excitable French­man. They bond over the arts and both fall mad­ly in love with an ancient stat­ue when on hol­i­day. Meet­ing Cather­ine (Jeanne More­au), who bears a remark­able resem­blance to the stat­ue, their rela­tion­ship var­i­ous­ly changes in accor­dance with Catherine’s volatile behav­iour and the world around them.

After the war, which sep­a­rat­ed the friends, they meet once again in Jules and Catherine’s house in the Black For­est, the pair hav­ing had a daugh­ter. Soon things begin to unrav­el as Cather­ine not only switch­es reg­u­lar­ly between which of the friends she wants to be with but with oth­er men in the area too. In typ­i­cal Truf­faut style, the film spells amorous tragedy.

Truffaut’s film trav­els exten­sive­ly, from Parisian streets to Alpine lodges. But its most effec­tive and endur­ing moments occur in the French cap­i­tal, so it only seemed right to scout out one of the city’s loca­tions; the bridge being the most evoca­tive image from the film. Of course, the film’s nar­ra­tive is real­ly haunt­ed by bridges, and not sim­ply by the one in question.

Under a bridge joined to Quai de Mon­te­bel­lo, Cather­ine jumps into the Seine in her first attempt at sui­cide (though this may sim­ply be a demon­stra­tion of her pow­er over the two men). The rela­tion­ship at the heart of the film also con­cludes on a bridge which finalis­es the ulti­mate tragedy of the lives on show; the rela­tion­ship lit­er­al­ly dri­ves off a bro­ken a bridge.

How­ev­er, the scene of the trio run­ning over the walk­way is far more opti­mistic than the film’s oth­er bridges, even if it is still tint­ed with fore­shad­ows of the melan­choly to come. The sce­nario acts to con­vey two aspects, the first being Catherine’s unpre­dictable nature. The trio walk down the steps to the bridge, on which she decides to race them all of the way to the oth­er side. She bolts off ahead before the final count, leav­ing the two men lag­ging behind.

Truf­faut enmesh­es the run­ners in the phys­i­cal make­up of the bridge, designed to keep crossers from any pos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting down onto the busy train lines snaking out of Gare de Lyon. The bridge is in some ways the des­tiny of the trio, with no choice avail­able oth­er than to con­tin­ue on in a straight line to the end.
The oth­er use of the bridge is to show the first bur­geon­ing of the ménage-a-trois.

At the end of the bridge, Cather­ine asks Jim to help her move her cas­es the fol­low­ing day rather than Jules. The lat­ter shrugs off the impli­ca­tion of some affec­tion between his friend and the woman he is slow­ly falling for by dis­tract­ing with a wit­ty jibe about teach­ing Shake­speare. But the first signs are there and undoubt­ed­ly the three run­ners are effec­tive­ly dif­fer­ent peo­ple from when they first climbed care­free down the steps.

The orig­i­nal Passerelle de Valmy has changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly but, with there still being a foot­bridge in the same place, I wan­dered through a win­tery Paris in search of it. The steps which the trio walk down start in between Avenue Win­ston Churchill and Rue Mar­ius Delch­er, and descend towards the mul­ti­tude of train tracks.

How­ev­er, one set of steps has since been removed with the new bridge clear­ly being high­er to accom­mo­date the increase in trains, wires and tall rail­way equip­ment. The met­al fenc­ing that enclosed the char­ac­ters has been removed and replaced with a much low­er fence allow­ing for a par­tic­u­lar­ly indus­tri­al, even bru­tal view out over busi­ness parks, fac­to­ries and oth­er grey build­ings hud­dling around the railway.

After tak­ing the Polaroid, I began to walk to the oth­er side of the bridge before accept­ing that it would be more in keep­ing with the spir­it of the film to run. In spite of some engi­neers walk­ing behind me, and per­haps caus­ing them to think I had com­mit­ted some crime, I sprint­ed through the win­ter air to the end, regret­ting the naïve deci­sion a few sec­onds after­wards and feel­ing admi­ra­tion for the trio of the film who kept up the pace to the end.

I caught my breath by the steps, notic­ing a defunct esca­la­tor on one side and the steps which the char­ac­ters walked down on the oth­er, still close to how they are seen in the film. It was, how­ev­er, appar­ent that the Paris Truf­faut cap­tured was long gone, hid­den beneath grey ware­hous­es, cars and con­crete. It was cer­tain­ly not a bridge for lovers to run across now, star-crossed or otherwise.