The Seven Basic Plots - Christopher Booker [117]
5. Destruction Stage: as the police close in, the remaining trio, Bonnie, Clyde and C. W. Moss, take refuge with Moss's father. The atmosphere between them all is now fraught and quarrelsome. Eventually, in return for a promise of leniency to his son, the father betrays Bonnie and Clyde, who are tricked into their third and final confrontation with the police. Helpless and trapped, they are bloodily gunned down.
Jules et Jim
Our fourth example is another well-known film of the 1960's, Francois Truffaut's Jules et Jim (1962).
1. Anticipation Stage: Jules and Jim, two high-spirited young men in pre-First World War Paris are full of nervous energy but lack direction, until a friend, Albert, shows them some lantern slides, including one of a female statue recently dug up on the Adriatic. A silent film-type caption tells us that they had never seen such `a calm, tranquil smile' as that which appears on the statue, but that if they saw it again `they would follow it'. It is the beginning of a Focus for their fantasy state, and when three strange girls shortly afterwards turn up for dinner they see that the third, Catherine, has exactly the smile of the statue. She is a bewitching madcap, given to impulsive pranks, and the two heroes are captivated. The Focus is complete.
2. Dream Stage: Catherine moves in to live with Jules, but the three become otherwise inseparable, enjoying a mad time all over Bohemian Paris. The sense of being drawn into a reckless, exhilarating dream is heightened when the three go off to the South of France together for the summer. 'After a long search they found the house of their dreams' says a caption. Here they play childish games together in the sun, Catherine always leading. `I think we are lost children' she says, and a caption tells us `she is an apparition. They return to Paris, where Jules and Catherine decide to get married.
3. Frustration Stage: gradually the mood of the story darkens. The First World War approaches and the three are separated because Jules, as an Austrian, has to return with his wife Catherine to the other side of the great European divide created by the war. When hostilities are over, Jim travels to be reunited with his friends, who are living in a lonely chalet in the mountains with a little daughter, and finds all is not well with the marriage. They are all awkward together, talking in platitudes punctuated by silences; Catherine sleeping alone ('we lead a monastic life'); and the mood is darkened still further by the surrounding gloomy forests and mist-shrouded lakes and mountains. Their old friend Albert reappears in rather sinister, enigmatic fashion, living nearby (is he having an affair with Catherine?). The sense that they may all be caught in some impending vortex is conveyed by the introduction of the film's theme song Le Tourbillon, `the Whirlpool'. Jim finds he is slipping hopelessly into love with Catherine himself. Jules allows him to move into the chalet, though not without a warning: `watch out'.
4. Nightmare Stage: as the three of them return to France the action of the film becomes more and more fragmented, as if they are all sleepwalking through some baffling nightmare, with many premonitory references to death. Catherine, becoming ever more withdrawn and enigmatic, with manic outbursts of fey gaiety, shuttles between the two men (with Albert making a last ominous, mysterious appearance). Jim makes a last desperate bid to escape from the vortex by returning to his old girl friend Gilberte, telling Catherine that he wants to marry and have children.
5. Destruction Stage: Catherine, with a strangely purposeful air, summons both Jules and Jim for a drive in the country in her little car. They stop at an inn for lunch. She calls Jim to her car, and deliberately drives it over a broken bridge into the river. Both are drowned, leaving a sadly uncomprehending Jules to superintend the burning of their coffins to ashes.
Anna Karenina