“It’s a risqué melodrama yet very moral” was how director François Truffaut described his third feature film. That morality didn’t satisfy censors – in France, it was restricted to 18 and up, while in Italy it was banned altogether for a time. No matter. The film – a thunderbolt of the French New Wave – endures. Released in 1964, set before and after World War I, and still as sexy, startling, and modern in this century as it was last, it examines every permutation in a ménage à trois: the fraternal love between Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre), and the romantic love they both pursue with Catherine (Jeanne Moreau). C’est magnifique. – Kimberley Jones
