Jules and Jim (1962)

Henri Serre: Jim

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Quotes 

• Jim : We played with life and lost.

• Jules : Either it's raining or I'm dreaming.

  Jim , Catherine : Or both.

• Jim : What is it?

  Catherine : Sulfuric acid, for the eyes of men who tell lies.

• Jules : Catherine never does anything halfway. She's an irresistible force that can't be stopped. Her harmony is never shaken because... she knows she is always innocent.

  Jim : You speak of her as if she was a queen.

  Jules : She is a queen. Let me be frank. She's not especially beautiful or intelligent or sincere... but she is a real woman. And that is why we love her... and all men desire her. Despite this, why did she make us a gift... of her presence? Because we treated her like a queen.

• Jim : I agree with you that in love a couple is not ideal. You only have to look around. You wanted to invent something better by rejecting hypocrisy and resignation. You wanted to invent love. But pioneers must be humble and unselfish. We must face the truth. We failed. We made a mess of everything. You tried to change me to suit you. I tried to spread joy, but I've created only pain.

• Jules : What's appalling about war is that it deprives man of his own individual battle.

  Jim : Yes, but I think he can wage his battle outside the field of war. I'm thinking of a gunner I met in the hospital. Returning from leave, he met a girl on the train. They talked from Nice to Marseilles. Stepping down onto the platform, she gave him her address. He wrote her frantically from the trenches every day for two years on bits of wrapping paper, by candlelight. As bombs rained down, his letters became ever more intimate. At first it was "Dear Miss" and "Yours truly." But the third letter he called her "My little lamb" and asked for her picture. Then it was "My adorable lamb." Then "I kiss your hand." Then "I kiss your forehead." Later he described the picture she'd sent and wrote of her breasts, which he thought he glimpsed under her robe. Soon he was addressing her intimately. "I love you terribly." One day he wrote to her mother, asking for the daughter's hand. He became her fiancé without ever seeing her again. As the war continued, his letters became even more intimate. "I make you mine, my love. I caress your adorable breasts. I press your naked body against mine." When she replied rather coldly, he was enraged and begged her not to flirt with him, for he could die at any time, and he was right. You see, Jules, to understand this extraordinary seduction by mail, you have to have known the violence of trench warfare, that collective madness where death is present every moment. So here's a man who took part in the Great War yet managed to wage his own individual battle at the same time and win a woman's heart through long-distance persuasion.

  [to Albert] 

  Jim : Like you, he had a head wound when he arrived at the hospital, but he wasn't as lucky as you. He died after surgery on the eve of the Armistice. In his last letter to the fiancée he hardly knew, he wrote, "Your breasts are the only bombs I love."

• Jules : She's more optimistic than you where time's concerned. She was at the hairdresser's and and arrived at 8:00 to dine with you.

  Jim : If I'd known she might still come, I'd have waited til midnight.

• Gilberte : Jim, you might stay and sleep here with me for once.

  Jim : No, Gilberte. If I stay today, I'll feel guilty if I don't stay tomorrow. If I stayed tomorrow, we'd be good as married. Isn't that against our rules?

• Jules : But Jules could -...

  Thérèse : Who's Jules?

  Jules : That's me.

  Thérèse : And you?

  Jim : Jim.

  Thérèse : Jim and Jules, then?

  Jim : No, Jules and Jim.

• Jim : I'm afraid she'll never be happy on this earth. She's a vision for all, perhaps not meant for any one man alone.

• Jim : She's a strange breed.

  Jules : Her father was an aristocrat. Her mother came from the masses. He was of an old Burgundian family. She was English. That's why she's ignorant of anything in between and teaches those who look at her -...

  Jim : Teaches them what?

  Jules : Shakespeare.

• Jim : I've always loved the nape of your neck. The only part of you I could look at unnoticed.

• Jules : The most important factor in any relationship is the woman's fidelity. The husband's is secondary. Who was it who wrote, "Woman is natural, therefore abominable?"

  Jim : Baudelaire, but he was describing a certain world.

  Jules : Not at all. He spoke of women in general. What he says about a young girl is magnificent: "Horror, monster, assassin of the arts, little fool, little slut. The greatest idiocy combined with the greatest depravity." Wait. I'm not finished. This is marvelous: "I'm always astonished they allow women inside churches. What could they possibly have to say to God?"

  Catherine : You're both fools.

• Jim : I understand.

  Catherine : I don't want to be understood. It's almost dawn.

• Jim : So you sacrificed your mustache too?

  Albert : Like everyone else. But I don't like it. I feel naked. I'm going to grow it back.

• Jim : [in bed]  Listen, Gilberte. If Catherine decides she wants something and thinks no one will be hurt - - though she could be wrong, of course - - she does it for her own pleasure and to learn from the experience. She hopes this way to attain wisdom one day.

  Gilberte : That could take a long time.

  Jim : Don't be mean.

  Gilberte : I'm not being mean. I'm jealous.

• Friend of Jim : Interesting, isn't she? Her name is Denise. Don't bother talking to her. She won't answer. She never talks. She's not an idiot. Just empty. Nothing in there. She's just a thing.

  Jim : A pretty thing.

  Friend of Jim : Yes, a beautiful object. It's just sex. Unadulterated sex.