I was looking for the topic here but it didn't seem to exist. A few months ago in a film group, it was suggested that Jim & Jules were in love with each other, not Catherine. I obviously didn't know what to think, which is why I'm rewatching the film, several months later. However, I wonder if anyone could provide insight to this?
shareIn some languages there is more than one word for love. English doesn't do that which is unfortunate since there are different types of love.
Jules did love Jim and vice versa, but as true friends. Remember when Jules went to the Russian front during the war so that he would not accidentally meet Jim wearing opposite uniforms? That was love. He went to the worst place possible and suffered even more horrors in order to avoid the worst horror he could imagine, hurting his friend who he loved.
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Hello Filmchick & Ludwig-
Thank you for your intelligent comments about this film. Jules & Jim loved each other, and each loved Catherine, and she in her way loved both of them, but the sexual aspects of their relationships were not central or controlling.
Truffaut's films were all about love but he never confused it with sex or lust. His treatment, usually tangential, of sexual matters was always embedded in complicated and multifaceted relationships. Not that these were asexual, but just that sex (or more properly lust) was always part of much bigger things. Look at "The Soft Skin", about a married man's affair, and yet the sexual matters are almost a side issue.
In the movie "Getting Straight", the Elliott Gould character is confronted by a professor (during his Master's degree oral defense) who insists that Gatsby (in Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby) had a denied homosexual passion for Nick Caraway that mirrored Fitzgerald's denied homosexuality. The scene is hilarious, precisely because the posturing is so ridiculous and transparent. I think something similar may be occurring in Filmchick's group.
Best wishes.
yes it's not a sexual love but...
Well I can't help but think that the unrequited love both the male characvters have for each other is the driving force of the film: both they and the lead Female are buting their heads against a sociaty that will grind them into dust (as two of them actualy encounter at the end of the film.)
I'm sorry to say it but i think that in one way at least it's a film about two men's romantic atachment to each other. Theere's references all over the film to it such as them saying that people thought they where Gay.
However this is just my personal reading.
There is a well respected literary theory proliferated mainly by Sedgewick, called 'homosociality'. On a basic level, it describes triangles such as that of Jules, Jim, and Catherine, in which whilst the male-female relationships appear to be the focus. In fact the woman is acting as a token of exchange between the men, and they are only concerned with each other at heart, whether friends or rivals. Personally as soon as I read about this theory, it really affected my viewing of Jules et Jim.
It's worth looking up. Hope that helps!
Dear Wizzysmith01
I re-direct your attention to the previously referenced scene in "Getting Straight". The notion that all intimate relationships and friendships between men are essentially sexual, whether mediated by a woman or not, seems peculiar.
I watched this film last night for the first time and thought it was terrific. I too thought that there was a homosexual relationship between Jules and Jim, but after thinking about the film and talking about it with my girlfriend I don't think their relationship was sexual. It seemed like a relationship built on dependency - they were the best of friends and couldn't bare to part. They both fell in love with the face on the statue at the same time and they both fell for Catherine at the same time. My thought was that since Jules and Jim loved and needed each other so much that neither one of them could fall in love with something without the other falling in love as well. I think Catherine takes advantage of that. The analogy for Catherine as the 'queen bee' is perfect. She wants the attention of every man and both Jules and Jim are willing to swoon over her as she is not only the object of desire, but so that the other doesn't get left behind. Sadly, I've known people like Catherine so I'm able to relate to the film but not sure if I can contribute much, if any, insight. Extremely well made film.
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It's been awhile since I've seen this film and it hadn't even occured to me to think that Jules and Jim were in love with each other. I thought they were just both in love with Catherine. They had a strong bond, but I didn't see it as sexual love. I don't have much insight to add either, only that I didn't read much into their relationship other than friendship.
shareIn the novel that Jim writes based on his relationship with Jules, he says that they were mistakenly suspected of having a sexual relationship. This is clear in the French, although glossed over in the English translation. The scene occurs near the beginning when the two are at the gymnasium. Since one is told only once that people have suspected them of being lovers and, in the next scene, one is introduced to Catherine, whom both men love passionately, I don't think that the position is tenable that the men were in love with each other and not with her.
shareIt depends how you read that seene. Is it a way of deflating their atraction to each other? You hear men do that sort of thing all the time and one often suspects it's more in the line of 'but we don't like each other like that DO WE!'
They don't have a 'sexual' relationship true but only because they never admit their love and use Catherine to keep in touch. Without her they'd have no reason to stay as close as they do.