Sitting squarely at the rising arch of Genet's power as an artist, his film Un chant d'Amour, a not-quite 30 minute silent short, is one of gay cinema's landmark underground films. It is provocative as much for its lyrical story of brotherly love as for its full frontal nudity. It was filmed in 1950 and is far ahead of any other Art film of its time. Indeed, it was deemed pornographic and smuggled into North America in bits and pieces by filmmaker and critic Jonas Mekas. The story revolves around two inmates in a prison in what may be Algeria. It is classical love stripped bare. An older, presumably Algerian, prisoner is deeply in love with the younger cellmate next to him. They communicate through a wall, passing cigarette smoke through a crack and try with difficulty to pass a garland between the cell windows. The antagonist of the piece is the jail guard, a voyeur and sadist, who uses his power over them to fulfill his fantasies.
The film itself is only lightly credited, but we do know that the young love interest in the picture is 18-year-old Lucien Senemaud who had became Genet's lover at the time and who Genet decided to cast. Very little is known about the others. The Algerian character was played by a barber (and reputed pimp) named Bravo. The identity of the guard is not at all known.
The premiere of the film, at the Cinematique Francaise no less, was scrapped due to its unabashed homoerotic storyline. Condemned as pornography, it is now seen as a groundbreaking work. In the 1950s and 60s it became a beacon in the fight against censorship and is one of the singular pivotal pieces in the history of gay cinema.
All the more fascinating was Genet's relationship with the film itself. Later in life, he did an about-face and dissociated himself from the production. In 1975 he refused an award from the French government, dismissing the film as too happy and not violent enough. It possibly held too many emotional memories for him. Although deeply in love with Senemaud at the time, the young fellow left Genet and ended up marrying. We do know that Genet supported Senemaud and his girlfriend and helped Senemaud build his first house with the royalties from one of his plays. Possibly the film resonated too much with him and the memories were too strong. It was common for men in the days before Stonewall to support their seemingly straight paramours financially - E.M. Forster did much the same with Bob Buckingham. Regardless of intentions or complications, the fact of denouncing it set him apart in his later years. He will always be remembered for his literature, of course - but this step back, this emotional hesitation regarding a seminal piece of gay history can't be forgotten. For a man who relished in pushing the envelope, why did he not embrace the work? By the 70s he was fighting for Palestinian rights and quite possibly simply considered the past the past.
Mishima went out in a blaze of glory, compared to the fading of Genet who died in Paris in 1986 after some personal regrets. After the death of his lover Abdullah in the early 1960s, he went into a deep depression, even attempting suicide. The late 60s saw the blossoming of his radical political beliefs that would stretch into work in the Middle East into the 1980s. He is buried in Larache, Morocco, against the sea.
On November 25, 1970 Mishima and a band of his closest intimates, in uniform, visited the headquarters of the Eastern Command in Tokyo. On a pretext, they obtained an interview with the base commander. After being introduced, Mishima and his men sealed the room. They tied the commander up and declared their intention to stage a coup d'etat, planning to appeal to the men on the base. Mishima went out onto the balcony and spoke for about two minutes to the gathered soldiers. He asked them to join him and overthrow the democratically elected government in order to install the Emperor once again as supreme leader of the nation. What he got in return for this were guffaws and jeering from the soldiers, who told him he'd best give it all up. A short stand off ensued, but one suspects that Mishima had the finale in his head from the beginning. He and his men retired to the interior of the commander's office and Mishima, in an intoxicated state of masochism, committed seppuku. The one soldier assigned to cut off his head as the coup de grace, a favourite of Mishima's - chosen by him - lost his nerve. Masakatsu Morita could not do it so the job was given to Hiroyasu Koga, who finished him off. The fact that Mishima had put his life in order before the attempted coup, even putting money aside to defend the remainder of his men in the ensuing court case, points to the fact that he had planned this blazing end from the start.
Mishima and Genet were two dark literary figures - gay, complex, political, and utterly, fatally glamorous - each in their own way. Does marginalization spell radicalization? Neither is speaking, neither will ever give up the ghost - but their literature will forever speak for them.
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