In Paris circa 1912, Frenchman Jim (Henri Serre) and a German named Jules (Oskar Werner) in their late 20s are drawn together by similar interests in literature and the fact that each listen selflessly when the other speaks.

Jim and Jules encounter a woman named Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) who shares the same mysterious smile of a statue they had been mesmerized by. She in turn adores both men because they pay attention to her.

Though she later marries Jules and gives birth to a daughter, Catherine turns out to be more complex than a statue. World War I separates the trio, but Jim’s visit to Jules’ and Catherine’s chalet on the Rhine after the war finds the dynamics of the trio’s love and friendship shifting. Ultimately, it doesn’t end well.

Directed by Francois Truffaut from a script adapted with Jean Gruault from Henri Pierre Rochet’s novel, this icon of the French New Wave cinema bursts out in anamorphic black and white with a freedom and reckless abandon made possible only by young filmmakers paying heedless disregard to convention.

Truffaut opted to loop almost all of the dialogue because he didn’t want the hassle of having a sound man on his set. The camerawork is hand held and exhilarating, particularly the famed shot of Moreau racing across a bridge.

The film – particularly the early sequences before the title characters fight on opposing sides of the Great War – is filled with a sense of innocence. No one seems to hold a job. Jules and Jim fill their days with games of dominoes, French boxing, smoking, drinking, sleeping late, riding bicycles, swimming, skipping rocks, viewing art, meeting gorgeous women in cafes, at dinner parties or on the streets, and searching for meaning in the City of Lights.

Though essentially a love triangle, the film flows freely without the constraint of a rational plot line. The dialogue is fueled by discussion of literature, art, philosophy and dreams. Richard Linklater based the entirety of Before Sunrise and Before Sunset on conversations such as these. Events unfold with little or no service to a story, but lend themselves beautifully to the fabric of who these three characters are and why they meet the fates that they do.

Catherine craves to be free, to reinvent her own life at any given moment. She resists labels and is equal parts masculine and feminine. This includes drawing a moustache on herself and going out under the alias “Tomas” or jumping into the Seine. Jim is an inquiring mind who seeks to travel, write and translate, to learn to live anywhere. Jules is generous and innocent but also vulnerable. When Catherine realizes his insecurities are a part of who he is and cannot be cured, she ceases to be his.

Shot at a fast pace and abound with terrific playfulness, the film succeeds most memorably with a feeling of timelessness. We have all had sublime relationships like the ones portrayed in this film, complicated, sometimes toxic, yet impossible to let go of. Characters speak with real depth and pathos without ever turning the proceedings into an abstract art film. It is cinema at its purest.