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Un chant d'amour (French pronunciation: [œ̃ ʃɑ̃ damuʁ]; English: A Song of Love) 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.
Petty criminal, outlaw writer, political radical, gay icon, the name Jean Genet means many things to many people, but filmmaker isn’t usually one of them. Yet Genet did direct a short film, A Song of Love (Un chant d’amour), in 1950. Open Culture, openculture.com
The cell wall in Un Chant d’amour is inscribed with the convicts’ frustration and desire, and becomes the site of extraordinary eroticism. At one point the older prisoner gently kisses the cell wall between himself and the young murderer; or, in Genet’s words from Notre-Dame des Fleurs, “He puts his cheek to the wall.
- Jane Giles
Genet would return to a number of these same themes with his later work, Prisoner of Love, but the visual expression of these ideas as presented in Un chant d'amour is really quite special. Yes, the film is still somewhat sexually explicit, even after fifty 50+ years on release, with the depiction of homosexual sex, abuse and expression really ...
- (3.7K)
- Short, Drama, Fantasy
- Jean Genet
- 1950
Despite its chequered history and reputation as pornography for the gay intelligentsia, Un chant d'amour is arguably Genet's most evocative and haunting work. His only film, it is easily on a par with his celebrated literary works, such as Notre-Dame-des-Fleurs and Querelle de Brest. With the mocking surrealism of Luis Buñuel and dark poetry ...
- Jean Genet
From the book Tuitions and Intuitions. 12 ROMANCE, EROTICISM, AND THE CAMERA IN JEAN GENET’S UN CHANT D’AMOUR In an interesting essay, Elizabeth Stephens links Un Chant d’amour (1950)with Jean Genet’s ballet scenario, ‘adame Miroir, written in the same period, as two works that represent, without dialogue, expressions of homoerotic ...
The only movie by novelist and playwright Jean Genet was once banned in the U.S. (Even the Supreme Court found it obscene!) It’s a short, poetic, black-and-white silent film about two male prisoners in solitary confinement. Yearning for companionship and love, they do what they can to overcome their sexual deprivation.
