Un chant d'amour

Genet's only film is a stunner. A short glimpse into the existence of a tortured soul.It must have elicited some gasps in 1950. If I was gay I would probably watch this film every week. I'm not, so let's just say that the images will haunt me for the rest of my days...

One of the most memorable of short films, UN CHANT D'AMOUR is also one of the most controversial. Made by the famed gay writer, Jean Genet, it is set in a prison and features uncensored homosexual scenes which may cut a little too close to the bone for some. If, on the other hand, you're not a homophobe, this is a beautiful and cinematically wonderful experience, with the same kind of magical attraction as Jean Cocteau's ORPHEE or LA BELLE ET LA BETE. Highly recommended for people with open minds, regardless of their own personal sexual orientation.

Imagery and metaphor as well as brutally realistic scenes. Its image of smoke through the wall has been copied in other, lesser films.

So original and daring for its time, the film still has the power to shock seventy five years later.

The power of the imagination to transcend quotidian setbacks and hurts is stunning. During the attack by the prison guard, the older prisoner fantasises about an idyllic afternoon with his beau from the next cell. When the gun is inserted it's at the moment in his mind that he finally gets to pleasure the younger man. The dank prison and the sadistic, jealous guard can't overcome desire, longing and the power of the mind.

The hand catching the flowers at the end is the final triumph. Separated but not separate, connection wins out.

Anyone who has read any of the novels or plays of Jean Genet will pretty much know what to expect from 'Un Chant d'Amour'. Genet, in works like 'Miracle of the Rose', and 'The Thief's Journal' adhered admirably to the axiom to "write what you know" and drew upon his experiences of a lifetime in and out of French penitentiaries to initiate the reader into a seedy criminal underworld saturated with a poignant homo-erotic light, populated by characters who display vulnerability in their brutality and beauty in the tragic empty determinism of their lives. However, the predictability of the content of 'Un Chant d'Amour' does not detract from the film in the slightest but rather fleshes out (pun intended) Genet's poetic vision and suggests how he could have further elaborated this vision if he had made more than this single short film.

The film begins with inmates blindly attempting to pass a flower from cell to cell, and this poetic metaphor of communication serves as the conceptual heart of the film as we're introduced to a series of inmates, whose needs for expression and communication, whether it be linguistic or sexual, are routinely denied and whose unfulfilled desires becomes all encompassing and unbearable. This realm of repressed desire is overseen by the warden who peers into the cells and ogles the men, enjoying the incarceration he enacts moment-by-moment with sadistic glee, and yet whose own sexual desire is as unfulfilled as that of the prisoners and feels driven to seek consummation through abuse.

The inherent voyeuristic potential of cinema is something which would later be successfully explored by Hitchcock in films such as 'Rear Window' (1954) and 'Psycho' (1960) as well as Michael Powell in the controversial 'Peeping Tom' (1960); this movie predates the work of both and yet seems to be fully aware of its subversive positioning of the viewer as both voyeur and fetishist as the bodies of the inmates are coveted in a pornographic fashion. It doesn't take a genius to figure out that such an explicit depiction of homosexual desire has the potential to alienate some… indeed, curiously Genet himself later disowned the film on the grounds that it is too pornographic! However, begging to differ with Saint Genet, for my money the humane treatment of the characters, the carefully crafted atmosphere, and the cinematography courtesy of Jean Cocteau are easily enough to redeem 'Un Chant d'Amour' as a work of art (in a similar way to how Kenneth Anger's 1947 debut 'Fireworks' escaped a obscenity charge on the grounds of being Art).

However, this said, even at 26 minutes I still felt the film was a tad longer than it should have been and easily could have been trimmed down to be under 20 minutes. Still, what remains is both an important early cinematic exploration of male desire as well as a study of the double-edged sword of torture and solace human desire, independent of sexual orientation, can bestow.

This film by Jean Genet is a very symbolic, surrealistic, and depressing film, presenting, through a series of disturbing and highly erotic images, upsetting metaphors for our desperate human need for love and union with another, and the barriers to fulfillment.

Because Jean Genet's own sensibilities were homosexual, all the characters in the film are male, and the eroticism is more accessible to men who either share his tastes: for such men, many scenes of the film can be very arousing. For others, the film will probably open up a window into the experience, and for still others, many scenes may provoke disgust and revulsion. Again, because of Genet's own tastes, there is an element of sado-masochism mixed into the eroticism: indeed, all the characters but one are oppressed prisoners, literally in "bondage." However, aside from the unusual sensuousness of the film, and the surprising explicitness, the film is full of unforgettably great imagery, honest and deep emotion, and enormous poetic beauty. It is a very slow-moving, dark, oppressive film, and should only be viewed when the viewer is prepared for a contemplative, surrealistic journey; in spite of its short length (about 25 minutes), it is a very compact film, and can feel quite draining, emotionally.

It is a little gem, and I regard it as one of the "essentials" of film.