Jean Genet's 1950 short Un Chant d'amour, his sole completed film, occupies an unusual position in the late French writer's work. While its subject matter--frustrated desire behind prison walls--is wholly characteristic of his better-known novels, including his masterpiece Our Lady of the Flowers (1944), Genet later disavowed it. Given that Un Chant d'amour was originally intended only for sale to private collectors and that it was banned from public exhibition for many years due to its explicit sexual content, you might assume that it's merely a stag reel with a literary pedigree or that it's somehow crude in execution. But whatever the reason for Genet's later shift in attitude, the film's reputation has grown to the extent that Cult Epics has seen fit to release it on DVD in a two-disc set, something very few experimental shorts would merit.

Set in a French prison, the story concerns a rough-hewn older prisoner who is in love with a narcissistic younger prisoner in an adjacent cell. The two communicate exclusively through the stone wall, and the older man fantasizes about wandering free in a forest with his love. A prison guard, who spends much of his time spying voyeuristically on the inmates, is likewise infatuated with the young prisoner and torments his main rival for the young man's affections.

Un Chant d'amour was financed by Nico Papatakis, owner of the nightclub La Rose Rouge, and it was shot mainly in the club's basement, which was redecorated to resemble a prison. It's one of those cases where the limited budget actually works in the film's favor, contributing to the overall sense of poetic abstraction. The bulk of the film is set in the prison, with the notable exception of the fantasy sequences, which are set outdoors in nature in the case of the older prisoner, or against a black backdrop in the case of the prison guard. According to biographer Edmund White, Genet may have been inspired by Kenneth Anger's Fireworks (1947), which Genet saw in 1949 when Anger traveled to Paris and befriended Jean Cocteau, who also supported Genet's work. (Fireworks is available on DVD from Fantoma in a stunningly transferred collection of early Kenneth Anger shorts.) White's claim seems plausible, especially given the visual similarities between the prison guard's fantasies and those of Anger's teenage protagonist. Still, the universe Genet creates is very much his own.

From the opening images, it is apparent that Genet had an innate gift for cinema, making it all the more regrettable that he never directed another film. Shot silent and intended for showing without musical accompaniment, Un Chant d'amour contains no title cards, nor does it need them, thanks to a tightly constructed narrative and telling visual details. In keeping with Genet's prose, the film also has a uniquely provocative and disturbing lyrical quality; it's impossible to forget such images as the recurring motif of a disembodied male arm, thrust through the bars of a cell window, attempting to catch a bouquet of flowers swung on a string from an adjacent cell. At times Genet also seems to comment deliberately on the basic voyeuristic nature of the cinematic apparatus, or on the relationship between film viewing and fantasy experience.

Un Chant d'amour is also remarkable for its frank intensity of eroticism; some of the images are surprisingly explicit even today, especially the episode where the guard passes from cell to cell and observes prisoners masturbating. But the most memorable images have to do with fantasy and sublimated desire, particularly the scene where the older prisoner blows cigarette smoke through a straw into the younger prisoner's mouth, and the prison guard's highly abstracted, Robert Mapplethorpe-style fantasies of muscular male flesh. Lest one think Genet's work speaks solely to a specialized gay subculture, it in fact touches on universal problems of sexual desire and human freedom.

The 2007 Cult Epics edition has distinct advantages and disadvantages compared to the 2003 British Film Institute DVD of the same film. The Cult Epics version is silent, as originally intended, and features a decent transfer of a somewhat battered print. The film looks as good as one might expect given its troubled history, though the transfer also contains excessive chroma noise. The BFI transfer appears to have less print damage and displays a more solid black-and-white image, though the differences between the two transfers are really minor. The BFI disc also has an effective, atmospheric score by Derek Jarman collaborator Simon Fisher Turner for those who absolutely cannot watch a 25-minute film in silence.

Kenneth Anger's audio commentary for the Cult Epics edition is historically valuable, given biographical connection with the director. Anger offers some good insights--at one point he suggests an intriguing parallel between Genet's film and Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet (1930)--but the commentary track is ultimately a frustrating experience because of many awkward pauses throughout. I can't help but feel that he might have had much more to say about the film with better preparation. The disc also features a video introduction by Jonas Mekas of the Anthology Film Archives; Mekas was arrested for showing the film, together with Jack Smith's notorious Flaming Creatures (1963), in a highly publicized obscenity case during the 1960s.

The second disc contains two documentaries on Genet, both made towards the end of his life. The second piece features a fascinating interview with Genet, dating from 1981, in which he speaks of his atheism and his admiration for Greece and the Arab world. Cult Epics should be applauded for taking the effort to license these documentaries, since they provide invaluable context for the uninitiated. The set comes with a booklet of still images from the film; I would have preferred an essay by an appropriate scholar such as Richard Dyer.

Un Chant d'amour is an essential work of underground cinema, and the Cult Epics DVD set offers a good selection of materials for the price, though perhaps the transfer of the film itself might have been stronger.

For more information about Un Chant d'Amour, visit Cult Epics. To order Un Chant d'Amour, go to TCM Shopping.

by James Steffen