Wikipedia: A Song of Love (French: Un chant d’amour) is French writer Jean Genet’s only film, which he directed in 1950. Because of its explicit (though artistically presented) homosexual content, the 26-minute movie was long banned and even disowned by Genet later in his life.
The plot is set in a French prison, where a prison guard takes voyeuristic pleasure in observing the prisoners perform masturbatory sexual acts. In two adjacent cells, there is an older Algerian-looking man and a handsome convict in his twenties. The older man is in love with the younger one, rubbing himself against the wall and sharing his cigarette smoke with his beloved through a straw.
The prison guard, apparently jealous of the prisoner’s relationship, enters the older convict’s cell, beats him, and makes him suck on his gun in an unmistakably sexual fashion. However, the inmate drifts off into a fantasy where he and his object of desire roam the countryside. In the final scene, it becomes clear that the guard’s power is no match for the intensity of attraction between the prisoners, even though their relationship is not consummated.
Genet does not use dialogue in his film, but focuses instead on close-ups of bodies, on faces, armpits, and penises. The film’s highly sexualized atmosphere has been recognized as a formative factor for works such as the films of Andy Warhol.
The men are having fun time at the park to be safe.
Thank-you! It still stands the test of time. Truly fine example of French new wave cinema in the 1950s
Very erotic
Wonderful! Thank you for bringing Un Chant D’Amour and the work of the great Jean Genet to a wider audience! Modern gay men should embrace him. I revere his books and the way he writes about sex between men. Un Chant D’Amour is indeed a timeless and dream-like erotic masterpiece. BTW: the beautiful dark haired younger prisoner with the tattoo was Genet’s lover at the time! I’d love for you to do a similar blog about the homoerotic underground films of Kenneth Anger like Scorpio Rising or Kustom Kar Kommandos! x
Who doesn’t love these Art House classics? Oink!
Amazing and beautiful!
Homo-eroticism at its finest. A true masterpiece!
Guess I’m one that doesn’t like Art House Classics. Very boring.
Not bad
Thank you for introducing this short film. Much appreciated.
Jean Genet was a career petty criminal and social outcast who had a unique life as a novelist and playwright. Abandoned as an infant by a French prostitute, he was raised by a series of foster families to land up in a penal colony at 15. This, along with a string of crimes and prison sentences, formed the basis of his books and plays. Considered one of the important mid-century avant-garde playwrights of the “Theatre of the Absurd” as defined by Camus. His life of crime by 1949 earned him a life sentence, but luminaries such as Jean Cocteau, Sartre and Picasso got him a Presidential pardon. By the 1950’s, the U.S. banned his works for obscenity. In the 60s, he entered radical politics with the Black Panthers, Arafat, Angela Davis, Geo. Jackson( Soledad Bros.) and the Red Army Faction in Germany. His books/plays have become movies and his play “Blacks” was the longest running Off-Broadway, non-musical play of the 60s. His books are interesting reads…they’re provocative and thought provoking.
Bitter69UK above mentions another interesting person, Kenneth Anger. Born here in Santa Monica, he has made his career in underground experimental filmmaking. One of the first openly gay filmmakers, he is known for his surreal/homoerotic/occult themes in his films. His group of friends is wide from Kinsey, Tennessee Williams, the Stones to Anton LeVay of the Church of Satan. He was influential on filmmakers such as Scorcese, David Lynch and John Waters. He is still making short films. The latest I found on the net was for the fashion house Missoni. You Tube has many of his shorts.
Thanks for posting up about this writer and this incredible film. I must admit—I did not know of Genet and his writings—I am surely going to have to check out his works.
Thanks for the “lesson.”