Jules and Jim and Thomas James John College

Perhaps the most iconic scene in Francois Truffaut’s Jules and Jim (1962) begins at 11:38. When Jules (Oskar Werner) and Jim (Henri Serre) and going to meet Catherine (Jeanne Moreau) to spend the evening together, and Catherine excites the scene by sporting a costume of Charlie Chaplin’s The Tramp.

When the men enter Catherine’s room, she greets them by name. The manner in which Jules corrects Catherine’s pronunciation of “Jim” to Jim’s preferred style further expresses the ‘unambiguous queer subtext that runs throughout’ (Oursler, 2014), though a small part of the scene it is an obvious and quite couple-like action. Truffaut had already established the possibility for a queer subtext in an earlier scene when the men are boxing. Jim reads Jules some pages from the Novel he is writing that he describes as “Rather Autobiographical”, he reads the line “People thought they were a bit queer” regarding the characters relationship. The men then excitedly run to the showers, which almost acts as symbolism for a sexual relationship between them. It is their comfortability with people viewing them as ‘queer’ that may serve as a strong defense for this point. It seems odd that two heterosexual males, who are aware of other views on their...