Truffaut’s Jules et Jim. Photograph: BFI
Chosen by Ken Loach.
Koach is the director of over 30 films including Kes, Riff-Raff, My Name is Joe and Looking for Eric. He won the 2006 Palme d’Or at Cannes for The Wind that Shakes the Barley.
This scene always cheers you up. Jeanne Moreau and the two guys on their bicycles in the sun in France, the music that goes with it… Partly it evokes what you imagine to be the perfect French vacation, but also it’s a very fine bit of filmmaking.
When you’re in the business and have been in the business a long time, you tend to dismember about 99% of films as you’re watching. The time when you used to watch a film just for enjoyment is difficult to recapture. But just occasionally a film will transcend that. The sense of enjoyment with this trio on their bicycles is perennial. It’s completely evocative of that carefree young moment, the age when people are carefree. And then of course, for these three, it will all be ruined by the war.
The song that was composed for the film – “Le tourbillon” – became very famous. I’d sing it for you if I wasn’t surrounded by colleagues who would take the piss. I think film music that tells you what to think is cheap – the film should do that without that prompting. But in Jules et Jim it is music in relation to the images, the music has an independent existence and there’s a relationship between the two.
It is not something subterranean, there to steer you through every second and push you into feelings that the pictures don’t generate themselves.
