Overview

One of FranÇois Truffaut's most poignantly memorable films, Jules and Jim, adapted a novel by the French writer and art collector Henri-Pierre Roch. The characters and events of the 1960s film were based on a real-life romantic triangle, begun in the summer of 1920, which involved Roch himself, the German-Jewish writer Franz Hessel, and his wife, the journalist Helen Grund. Drawing on this film and others by Truffaut, Robert Stam provides the first in-depth examination of the multifaceted relationship between Truffaut and Roch. In the process, he provides a unique lens through which to understand how adaptation works-from history to novel, and ultimately to film-and how each form of expression is inflected by the period in which it is created. Truffaut's adaptation of Roch's work, Stam suggests, demonstrates how reworkings can be much more than simply copies of their originals; rather, they can become an immensely creative enterprise-a form of writing in itself. The book also moves beyond Truffaut's film and the mnage--trois involving Roch, Hessel, and Grund to explore the intertwined lives and work of other famous artists and intellectuals, including Marcel Duchamp, Walter Benjamin, and Charlotte Wolff. Tracing the tangled webs that linked these individuals' lives, Stam opens the door to an erotic/writerly territory where the complex interplay of various artistic sensibilities-all mulling over the same nucleus of feelings and events-vividly comes alive.

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9780813537252

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Reviews

An original and fascinating study that spins out from Truffaut's Jules and Jim to explore the world of literature, film, and avant-garde sexuality to which it is related. Stam has many interesting things to say about the theory of adaptation, the sexual politics of modernist bohemia, and the lives of individual artists. --James Naremore author of More Than Night: Film Noir in Its Contexts We discover-in Robert Stam's sexy, startling, and infinitely entangled plot-that hyperbolic infidelity may indeed inspire felicitous creativity, which makes this book essential reading not only for all those impassioned by modernist autobiography and New Wave cinema, but even more important in our times, for those who wish to celebrate the joyful wisdom of erotic values. --Allen S. Weiss author of Perverse Desire and the Ambiguous Icon Supple and sophisticated, FranCois Truffaut and Friends tells an affecting story-several stories-and does so with verve. --Dudley Andrew professor of comparative literature and film studies, Yale University Supple and sophisticated, Francois Truffaut and Friends tells an affecting story-several stories-and does so with verve. --Dudley Andrew professor of comparative literature and film studies, Yale University Robert Stam has written a fascinating study of transposition, illuminating aspects of biography, literature and cinema. It won't be possible to watch Jules and Jim again without thinking of the complex layers of lived and imagined life that feed into Truffaut's classic film. --Annette Insdorf author of Francois Truffaut

We discover-in Robert Stam's sexy, startling, and infinitely entangled plot-that hyperbolic infidelity may indeed inspire felicitous creativity, which makes this book essential reading not only for all those impassioned by modernist autobiography and New Wave cinema, but even more important in our times, for those who wish to celebrate the joyful wisdom of erotic values. --Allen S. Weiss author of Perverse Desire and the Ambiguous Icon

We discover-in Robert Stam's sexy, startling, and infinitely entangled plot-that hyperbolic infidelity may indeed inspire felicitous creativity, which makes this book essential reading not only for all those impassioned by modernist autobiography and New Wave cinema, but even more important in our times, for those who wish to celebrate the joyful wisdom of erotic values.

Supple and sophisticated, FranCois Truffaut and Friends tells an affecting story-several stories-and does so with verve. --Dudley Andrew professor of comparative literature and film studies, Yale University

Author Information

Robert Stam is University Professor at New York University, where he teaches a course on the French New Wave. He has published widely on French and comparative literature, film, and theory.

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