Welcome to On the Radar, where we preview up-and-coming arts events to mark your calendar for. Today’s edition is a classic foreign film from the Janus catalog.
Three years after the debut of his best known film, The 400 Blows, French director Francois Truffaut went on to create one of the most famous love triangles in cinematic history. The title characters of his 1962 film,Jim — screening next weekend in St. Pete Beach — are best friends (one German, one French), enjoying convivial bachelorhood just before World War I. When they meet the beguiling Catherine—played by Jeanne Moreau in the flush of youth—major relationship drama ensues. As Catherine alternates between romantic entanglements with the two men over subsequent decades, profound marital discontent, infidelity and the emotional tensions of childbearing all come in for Truffaut’s coolly intellectual and vaguely absurdist treatment. The screening is part of Beach Theatre’s summer Sunday Morning Classics series, a look at classic foreign films from the Janus catalogue recently re-mastered in high-definition; the series concludes next week with Brazilian tour de force Black Orpheus. Sun., Aug. 23, 11 a.m., Beach Theatre, 315 Corey Ave., St. Pete Beach, 727-360-6697, beachtheatre.com. – Megan Voeller
This article appears in Aug 12-18, 2009.