‘Jules and Jim,’ ‘Elevator to the Gallows’ to be screened

CAIRO - 15 August 2017: The French films ‘Jules and Jim’ and ‘Elevator to the Gallows’ will screen at Cimatheque, Downtown Cairo, on August 17 and 18 respectively at 7 p.m. to pay tribute to French actress, singer, screenwriter and director Jeanne Moreau.

‘Jules and Jim,’ directed by François Truffaut and written by Henri-Pierre Roché and François Truffaut, is a drama and romance film released originally in France in 1962.

‘Jules and Jim’ tells the story of a complicated love triangle between two friends: Jules (from Austria) and Jims (from France). Both of them fall in love with the same woman (Catherine) who initially falls in love with, and marries, Jules. But not all is as it seems as when they meet again after the war in Germany, Catherine falls in love with Jims.

Despite that, the true moral of the story revolves around something different– their enduring, unaffected friendship.

It stars Jeanne Moreau as Catherine, Oskar Werner as Jules and Henri Serre as Jim.
It won the Bodil Award in 1963 for the Best European Film, the Silver Ribbon award at the Italian National Syndicate of Film Journalists for Best Foreign Director in 1963 and Best Director at the Mar Del Plata awards in 1962.

The next film, ‘Elevator to the Gallows,’ originally ‘Ascenseur pour l'échafaud,’ is a drama, crime and thriller film originally released in France in 1958. It is directed by Louis Malle and written by both Roger Nimier and Louis Malle.

It is story about Florence (Jeanne Moreau) who is married to a rich arms dealer, Simon Carala (Jean Wall). She has a secret relationship with her husband’s right-hand-man Julian (Maurice Ronet) who wants to kill her husband through a faked suicide. But after he kills her husband, the crime goes awry as he forgets to remove a rope that remains hanging outside the window, and hence he returns back to the crime scene to remove it. Yet, after doing so, he becomes trapped in the elevator of the building. Eventually, Julian and Florence end up in jail.

Both films were adapted from French novel; ‘Elevator to the Gallows’ written by Noël Calef and ‘Jules and Jim’ is adapted from a novel written by Henri-Pierre Roche.
Moreau was found dead in her home in Paris on Monday, July 31, 2017 at the age of 89. Her last film in 2015 was a French comedy called ‘My Friends' Talent.’

French President Emmanuel Macron paid tribute to her saying that she ‘embodied cinema.’

Moreau was born in Paris on January 23, 1928, who worked with some of the world's most acclaimed directors such as François Truffaut, Louis Malle, Orson Welles and Elia Kazan. She rose to fame during the 1960s.

“Perhaps her most enduring New Wave film was Truffaut’s ‘Jules and Jim’ (1962), in which she played a free spirit at the center of a love triangle set before and after World War I,” according to the Washington Post.

She won an honorary Oscar in 1998 for Lifetime Achievement, numerous French cinema and theater awards and presided over the jury at the Cannes Film Festival twice.