Love Song

UN CHANT D’AMOUR

France, 1950
Director: Jean Genet

Available on DVD - order here

Review by Mark Simpson 

I had already won­dered what would become of the meet­ing of a hand­some young guard and a hand­some young crim­i­nal,” wrote Jean Genet in his 1943 debut prison novel, Our Lady of the Flow­ers, penned while he was him­self serv­ing a life sen­tence as a per­sis­tent petty crim­i­nal, one that would only end when he received a State Par­don arranged by Jean Cocteau’s lawyer. “I took delight in the fol­low­ing two images: a bloody and moral shock, or a sparkling embrace in a riot of spunk and panting…”.

Well, you would Jean.…

But then so would the rest of us, judg­ing by con­tem­po­rary pop­u­lar culture’s obses­sion with bloody moral shock, sticky pant­ing and gen­eral low-life pas­sions, whether it’s an episode of the TV prison drama Oz, movies by Guy Ritchie, rap music by Eminem, or surf­ing for voyeuris­tic thrills on the net.

Genet’s famous 1950 short Un Chant d’Amour, finally released by the BFI for the first time on DVD and the only film made by this most cin­e­matic of lit­er­ary tal­ents, seems to be a visual explo­ration of Our Lady’s day­dream. Set in a French prison, this silent, black and white 25 minute “porno” movie intended for sale only to rich homo­sex­ual pri­vate col­lec­tors, Un Chant d’amour now looks like one of the most influ­en­tial mod­ern films ever made. Or at least, one of the most visionary.

It’s well known that Chant d’amour influ­enced under­ground film and Queer Cin­ema direc­tors such as Derek Jar­man and Todd Haynes. How­ever, the impact of Chant — and of the Genet sen­si­bil­ity it’s soaked in — goes much fur­ther and deeper, and is rather more, shall we say, per­verse. In a twist that would no doubt have revolted him, Genet’s mar­ginal sen­si­bil­ity, his out­sider love for hood­lums, drag queens and low-life — and most of all, his pas­sion for sweet-and-tender mur­der­ous hooli­gans — has become, albeit in spayed fash­ion, nor­mal.

What hap­pens in Chant? Very lit­tle — in fact, absolutely bugger-all by the stan­dards of con­tem­po­rary porn. Bore­dom and frus­tra­tion reigns — and so does the des­per­ate, itchy-but-lyrical eroti­cism that comes with seclu­sion, for both the impris­oned and the impris­oner. A list­less prison guard hap­pens to notice a bou­quet of flow­ers being swung from a cell win­dow, the neigh­bour­ing prisoner’s hand, extended between the bars, repeat­edly try­ing and fail­ing to catch it. He inves­ti­gates, peer­ing through spy-holes and wit­nesses one male pris­oner after another mas­tur­bat­ing in dif­fer­ent fash­ions, some danc­ing fran­ti­cally, some lan­guorous on their bunks, some stand­ing, some wash­ing. Aroused, either by the scenes or the sadis­tic thrill of his pow­er­ful posi­tion, the war­den grabs and rubs his own packet. Nearly half a cen­tury before every­one had a peep­hole in their bed­rooms called the inter­net, Genet had envi­sioned a web­cam, Big Brother world of alone-ness and voyeurism, mass sep­a­ra­tion and obser­va­tion, tedium and fascination.

We see an older pris­oner knock­ing on the wall, which is tat­tooed with graf­fiti and a huge phal­lus, try­ing to attract the atten­tion of his younger neigh­bour who is seen jazz-waltzing with him­self in a dirty vest with a face as ten­der as it is tough — antic­i­pat­ing by a few years Mar­lon Brando’s Stan­ley Kowal­ski, and by sev­eral decades the face that Colin Far­rell wishes he had. The lad, as lads must, seems unin­ter­ested and con­tin­ues jazz-waltzing with him­self, caress­ing the tat­too on his shoul­der. The older man, under­stand­ably, works him­self into a frenzy, hug­ging and lick­ing the wall, press­ing his gen­i­tals against it. Finally he lights a cig­a­rette, inserts a straw through a tiny hole, and blows smoke through it into the next cell. The boy stu­diously ignores this flir­ta­tion. The older pris­oner with­draws, stubs out the cig­a­rette. And begins the whole process again.

This time, as the straw probes, the lad responds, kneels at the wall close-eyed and open mouthed and receives the bil­low­ing white smoke, in what Jane Giles, author of Crim­i­nal Desires: Jean Genet and Cin­ema has described as “one of the most erotic scenes in cin­ema”. But it is the tat­tooed, impas­sive wall itself and its tight, unyield­ing hole that is the real star. Genet knows that romance — and even desire itself — is only really pos­si­ble when it’s impos­si­ble (and is per­haps why the visual long­ing of Chant seems to antic­i­pate so much adver­tis­ing that puts the com­mod­ity — the jeans, the DVDplayer etc — in place of the wall). The only “sex” we see in Chant is very brief, shad­owy glimpses of mas­tur­ba­tion — and the erotic rever­ies of the pris­on­ers and the guard, in the form of oddly chaste tableaux of longed-for but never realised clinches.

Although osten­si­bly made to excite 1950s homo­sex­u­als, Chant has noth­ing in com­mon with con­tem­po­rary gay porn which is all about brightly lit con­sum­ma­tion; telephoto-lensed oper­a­tions with­out anaes­thetic which, oddly, end up show­ing noth­ing at all. Chant’s end­less long­ing is arguably much more “obscene”. Even as recently as 1989 the film was banned by Hull City Coun­cil for being, in their own con­fused yet per­haps not so con­fused words, both “bor­ing” and “shock­ing”.  (Which also hap­pens to be a pretty good descrip­tion of the con­di­tion of con­tem­po­rary culture.)

None of the par­tic­i­pants in this “gay film” were actors. Nor were any of them homo­sex­ual. Lucien Sen­e­maud who played the young con­vict, was a lover of Genet, but he was also mar­ried (his wife didn’t seem to mind the rela­tion­ship, espe­cially after Genet bought them a house). The older pris­oner was played by a Tunisian Mont­marte baker and pimp with a fam­ily of eight chil­dren. In fact, the only true actor in Chant is the erect penis briefly glimpsed strik­ing the wall — report­edly a stunt dou­ble belong­ing to a pro­fes­sional performer.

Authen­tic­ity was para­mount for Genet, who, unlike most con­tem­po­rary low– life mer­chants, was him­self the real deal: an orphan raised by the French State who spent most of the first 40 years of his life in homes, borstals and pris­ons. Guy Ritchie, on the other hand, the “geezer” direc­tor who made a great play of the fact that many of the men in his lovingly-shot hood­lum movies were not actors but “real tough guys”, spent most of his youth in pub­lic schools and baro­nial homes. Nonethe­less, a spayed ver­sion of Genet’s wor­ship of beau­ti­ful bas­tards has become one of the rul­ing pas­sions of con­tem­po­rary culture.

The gen­eral life-sentence of soli­tary con­fine­ment depicted in Chant is not some­thing that Genet felt great sor­row over. In his last TVinter­view in 1985, a year before he died, an heroic per­for­mance of scorn­ful arro­gance, he was asked by his earnest young inter­viewer, “Do you always feel apart — alone?”

“Yes,” he replied, mat­ter of fact. “I’m apart now. You’re over there, I’m over here.”

“Does this not dis­tress you?”

“Not at all. What would be dis­tress­ing would be if there were no dis­tance between me and you!”

In Chant, it’s only as the guard is walk­ing away from the prison that the flow­ers swung between the win­dows are finally caught. But the guard, with his back to the prison, doesn’t see it