Jules et Jim (Jules and Jim). 1962. France. Directed by Francois Truffaut. Screenplay by Truffaut, Jean Gruault, based on the novel by Henri-Pierre Roché. With Jeanne Moreau, Oskar Werner, Henri Serre. 35mm. 105 min.
Hitchcock comments on how he would have organized the script for Jules et Jim, as he observed Truffaut’s didn’t possess a formal story arc: “At one point, when one of the characters jumps out of a window, the story stops. Then a title reading ‘some time later’ flashes across the screen, and the action is picked up again in the movie house showing a newsreel on the burning of books…. Now, that may be good and correct in its way, but in the genre of the suspense story, it would be absolutely inadmissible.”