Jules and Jim (1962)
Oskar Werner: Jules
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Quotes
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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.
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Jules : But not this one, Jim. Okay?
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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."
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Jules : Catherines maxim is: At least one party in a relationship must be faithful. The other party.
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Jules : Whatever Catherine does, she does fully. She's a force of nature that manifests in cataclysms. In every circumstance she lives in clarity and harmony, convinced of her own innocence.
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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.
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Jules : [Speaks a phrase in German] Translation, Catherine?
Catherine : "Hearts yearning for each other. O God, O God, the pain they cause."
Jules : Not bad. Though "O God, O God" was your addition. Good night. Give my regards to the others if you see them.
Catherine : Would you lend me Goethe's "Elective Affinities" tonight?
Jules : You just lent it to Jim.
Catherine : To bad.
