Jules et Jim seemed revolutionary at the time, but Truffaut's revolution, unlike Godard's, implied not so much the destruction of the past as a turning back to the humanism of Vigo, Renoir and the French cinema of the 30s. The film's "rondo of love" represents both a backward glance at the best of the past and a forward glance into the cinema's future. Its enthusiasm for what the cinema is and can be is what makes it so special.

What It Means

This is a placeholder explanation generated by the low-overhead model. It interprets "Jules et Jim seemed revolutionary at the time, but Truffaut's revolution, unlike Godard's, implied not so much the destruction of the past as a turning back to the humanism of Vigo, Renoir and the French cinema of the 30s. The film's "rondo of love" represents both a backward glance at the best of the past and a forward glance into the cinema's future. Its enthusiasm for what the cinema is and can be is what makes it so special." in the context of ""François Truffaut: Jules et Jim", The Guardian (11 May 2000).
• Reprinted in A Century of Films: Derek Malcolm's Personal Best (I.B. Taurus, November 2000) Century of Cinema, pp. 20–22, 21–22" to mean that wisdom is timeless.