The Best Films I've Never Seen Before: Un Chant D'Amour (1950)

Un Chant d’Amour (1950) *** ½
Directed by: Jean Genet.
Written by: Jean Genet.

Jean Genet is mainly known as a writer, whose work was brazenly homosexual, rubbing the mainstream face in their own homophobia. He only made one film, the 1950 short film Un Chant d’Amour that was apparently never meant to be seen publicly. He made it as pornography for wealthy, gay Frenchmen, and he was so embarrassed by it, that he disowned the film. Why anyone would be embarrassed by a film like Un Chant d’Amour is beyond me however. It is a wordless, 26 film, that shows that Genet had a real eye behind the camera. It is an erotic film that was miles ahead of its time in 1950 – and to be quite honest, still makes many of the “gay” films of today look sanitized by comparison. It’s a fascinating little film.

The movie takes place inside a French military prison. Two prisoners – an older, darker skinned man, and a younger man who spends much of his time dancing by himself while look at the tattoo on his shoulder – are in adjoining cells, separated by a concrete wall. Despite this, they share an erotic connection. They interact with each other the only ways they can – blowing smoke through a straw via a hole in the wall. They dance together, and at times, grind up against the same concrete wall – on opposite sides of course. There is a guard who watches these displays with a mixture of disgust, jealously and lust. This confusion leads the guard to lash out violently towards the older prisoner – in one sequence beating him with a belt, and in another, forcing him to suck on his gun in a highly sexualized fashion. The older prisoner dreams of frolicking in a field of flowers with his younger companion, who he is forced to be apart from.

Of course, the prisoner is a none too subtle metaphor for how society treated homosexuals at the time the movie was made. They are separated from the one they love, and forced to keep their lives apart from society.

Genet’s film shows that had he continued in filmmaking, he probably could have become a truly great director. He has an eye for imagery here that is striking, and some of his images (the passing of flowers from one prisoner to another for example) that is truly haunting. His film is also one of the only truly erotic gay films I have ever seen. Of course, because of its full frontal male nudity and it’s in your face gay content, the film was banned back when it was completed in 1950. Hell, Genet had his books banned in America for much the same reason later in the 1950s. The mainstream had control of the culture at that time, and they did not want to see anything with homosexual content in it. Perhaps that’s why Genet never made another film – it would have been impossible to do what he wanted to.

But what is striking to me about Un Chant d’Amour is how much more erotic it is than gay films made today – over 60 years later. I’m thinking of mainstream films like Jonathan Demme’s Philidelphia (1993), which allowed Tom Hanks to be gay, and in a relationship, but was devoid of any display of sexuality between him and Antonio Banderas. The same could be said of even a film like Ang Lee’s Brokeback Mountain (2005), which was rather chaste in its depiction of sexuality. Oliver Stone’s Alexander (2004) had Colin Farrell’s Alexander supposed torn between two sexual rivals – Rosario Dawson and Jared Leto, but while Dawson is portrayed as a sexual firecracker, Leto is little more than an homosexual puppy dog, looking at Farrell with wide eyes. The only film that comes to mind that could be seen as a direct descendant of Un Chant d’Amour if John Cameron Mitchell’s wonderful Shortbus (2005), which depicted sexuality of all kinds in a more honest light.

Un Chant d’Amour really is a one of a kind type of film. It is because it is Genet’s only film, but also because many filmmakers seem to be scared to follow his lead. There is no doubt that opinion has changed about homosexuals in the 61 years since Genet made this film. But it is also true that society has a long way to go.

The Best Films I've Never Seen Before: Rose Hobart (1936)

Rose Hobart (1936) **
Directed by: Joseph Cornell.
Featuring: Rose Hobart.

I have to admit it – the first time I watched Joseph Cornell’s Rose Hobart, I had no idea what the hell it was supposed to mean. It is an 18 minute short, where Cornell re-edited the 1931 film East of Bornero, focusing entirely on the film’s female lead – Rose Hobart. Scenes are edited together completely out of order, with some transitions jarring in effect, as everything around Hobart changes from shot to shot – the setting, the other characters, her costumes – yet because everything is shot at essentially the same angle, and because Cornell chooses shots to sit next to each other where Hobart is in a similar position on the screen, or making a similar movement, it appears to be one disjointed scene. The plot of East of Bornero is completely excised, as is the dialogue, as Cornell uses music over the whole thing. We remain fixated on Hobart throughout the film, and with no context with which to view the images, we have to rely on the images themselves. This results in differing views of Hobart from scene to scene – as a sex object, a surrogate mother (to a monkey no less), to a damsel in distress, etc. Cornell plays with our ideas of film grammar, because his re-editing breaks all of the rules we have come to expect. Devoid of context, we have to rely on the images themselves. The entire movie has a blue hue – which Cornell originally achieved by projecting the film through blue glass.

After a first confused viewing of Rose Hobart, I went and read a little bit about the film, and came back to it again. After all, it is only 18 minutes. Once again, the film had the same effect on me – by depriving us of any context for the images on the screen, we are forced to evaluate them as they stand on their own. Cornell is highlighting the images themselves, not their context.

I suppose to some, this could be considered art. Salvador Dali apparently attended a screening in 1936, and was angered because he said had the exact same idea for a movie – although he never wrote it down or told anyone about it – and that Cornell had somehow “plagiarized his dreams”. To a certain extent, Rose Hobart can be seen as a similar film to Un Chien Andalou, the infamous short Dali made with Luis Bunuel. Both films have no plot, and that’s the point. That the images are meant to be taken on their own, and the filmmakers want to play with our idea of what a movie is, and what the images mean.

For me though, I didn’t find Rose Hobart, the film, to be all that interesting – even the second time through. I have to admit that I still do not entirely “get” the film, so if you’re a fan of the film, or Cornell, then feel free to dismiss my opinion. Art is in the eye of the beholder, and while many think that Cornell is a great artist, based on my experience with Rose Hobart I think I have to admit that he’s just not for me.

The Best Films I Have Never Seen Before: Meshes of the Afternoon (1943)

Meshes of the Afternoon (1943) ****
Directed by: Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid.
Written by: Maya Deren.
Starring: Maya Deren (The Woman), Alexander Hammid (The Man).

What is one to make of a film like Maya Deren & Alexander Hammid’s Meshes of the Afternoon? It is a strange, surreal short (only 16 minutes long) that is nonetheless a haunting cinematic experience. It portrays a world that, I think, is almost entirely in the head of the main character. What is in her head, and what is reality becomes blurred beyond recognition. In the days since I have seen the film, it keeps expanding in my mind, as its images keeping coming up in my thoughts. I have never been as big of a fan of short, surreal films like this one – but Meshes in the Afternoon is a tiny masterpiece.

The “action” in the film involves a woman coming home. The film opens with a shot of a flower in a long way driveway that the woman picks up. She then continues to the stair case leading into her house, walks up, unlocks the door, goes inside and falls asleep on a chair. She then dreams she is chasing a strange, grim reaper like creature, with a mirror face, but cannot catch him. Each time she fails, she ends up at the end of her driveway, and walks back up the same stairs. Each time is slightly different than before, in terms of the camera movement (in one scene in particular where the camera moves with her body), the fumbling for the key, the placement of a knife inside the apartment. She wakes from her dream to find a man in her apartment, who she comes to see as the grim reaper character from earlier – and tries to fight him off. Eventually, we will see this same man take the same journey that the woman has taken multiple times – up the driveway, up the stairs, and comes into the apartment, to find the woman dead in the chair – a supposed suicide.

What does all of this mean? Does it mean anything? Maya Deren has said she wanted to make a film similar to Un Chien Andalou, the infamous Salvador Dali/Luis Bunuel short film, but that is misleading. The whole point of Un Chien Andalou, was that there was no point. It is simply a series of images that bare no relationship to each other, meant to shock and scare the audience. But Meshes in the Afternoon is different – it quite clearly has a “plot” that can be unlocked.

In short, Meshes of the Afternoon is all about the woman – the grim reaper and the man don’t really matter, except in how she perceives them. This seemingly mundane routine of coming home gets expanded in the woman’s mind to become something much more than what we see them as. It all leads to this blending of the real world and the dream world, as the two seep into each other, and the woman ends up dead.

Yet, I think describing the movie, and what the actual plot means, is to take some of the pleasure out of Meshes of the Afternoon. The film is a clear influence on the work of David Lynch – in particular his “Hollywood Trilogy” of Lost Highway (1997), Mulholland Drive (2001) and Inland Empire (2006). I’m thinking in particular of the sequence in Lost Highway involving Robert Blake, and that video he gives Bill Pullman where, yes, it is a video of him going up the stairs, into Pullman’s apartment. Or of the suicide ending of Mulholland Dr., when Naomi Watts’ dream world clashes with the real one. Or the entirety of Inland Empire, which its multiple repetitions and amplifications throughout the film, which culminates much the same way.

But Lynch is just one filmmaker – the most obvious one – influenced by Meshes of the Afternoon. The film’s impact and influence can be seen all over the place. It is clearly one of the most influential shorts in film history.

Yet, Meshes of the Afternoon, unlike a previous entry in this series, Kenneth Anger’s Scorpio Rising, remains interesting in and of itself – not just because of what it inspired. It is a haunting cinematic experience. One that I doubt I’ll ever forget.

The Best Films I've Never Seen Before: Scorpio Rising (1964)

Scorpio Rising (1964) ***
Directed By: Kenneth Anger.

When it was released, Scorpio Rising was considered a groundbreaking film in the underground movement. Upon its initial screening, it was reported to the LA Vice Squad, who raided the theater and confiscated the print as pornography – because of a few blink and you’ll miss it shots where you may be able to see a penis or two. A legal battle, which went all the way to the California Supreme Court, ended up correctly ruling that Scorpio Rising was not pornography and should be allowed to be shown because it had “redeeming social merit”. The film itself remains important – but mainly because of what it inspired. You can see the roots of films like Easy Rider here, as well as why the film served as an inspiration for filmmakers as diverse as Martin Scorsese, David Lynch, Nicolas Roeg and John Waters. Watching the film now, the shock value is pretty much completely gone, and the film mainly serves as a time capsule – a perfect product of its time and place.

Scorpio Rising is a wordless half hour long film that uses happy pop songs as an counterpoint to his film about nihilism and death in a motorcycle gang. He uses montage style filmmaking, in a definite homage to Sergei Eisenstein who perfected the style in films like Battleship Potemkin, to equate the bikers working on their machines to silly little children playing with their toys. Later, he will equate they way these men feel about their machines, with the way Christians feels about Jesus – in that they worship them. Finally, in the last segment, which is full of nihilism and death, he will equate them all to Nazis. That Anger pushed his point so far, and did so in just a half an hour, and without a word of dialogue being spoken, is truly an achievement on his part.

And some of the images in the film are truly memorable – especially as the film descends into chaos and violence and death. Anger’s film pokes fun at this homoerotic death cult by looking backwards in time – the bikers seem to worship James Dean and Marlon Brando as much as anyone. And ultimately, I think that is the point of Scorpio Rising. Anger is picking a subculture – biker gangs – who are predominantly known for being masculine and subverting it – making it queer for lack of a better word, to try and break down the barriers between gay and straight, or at least to get gay cinema into the conversation. Remember, this is a time where you still couldn’t have an openly gay character in your movie – just a few short years after Cat on a Hot Tin Roof had to make cuts so that it wasn’t as obvious that Paul Newman’s character was gay (it didn’t work, he was gay, and I think everyone knew it). That is why Scorpio Rising was so shocking in 1964 – people hadn’t seen something as in your face as this before.

However, in the 47 years since Scorpio Rising has been released, we have seen a lot more than what Anger did. Having said that, Scorpio Rising remains a fascinating film – it predates the music video by decades, and yet many videos use the same basic structure that Anger applies here. Martin Scorsese would take using pop music as a counterpoint to his violent opuses to a new level. John Waters would push the envelope of gay cinema much further a decade later. And yet on a certain level, it all comes back to Scorpio Rising.

I don’t think Scorpio Rising is a great film. A great film never really ages no matter how old it gets, and that is not something you can say about this film. It has aged a lot in 47 years. One of the challenges of a film like Scorpio Rising is to try and see it the way people saw it when it was first released – something nearly impossible for someone like me, who was not even close to being born in 1964. And yet, when I try, I understand why this film felt so dangerous, so liberating back when it was made. Now, it seems almost quaint compared to what we are used to seeing. In 1964, Scorpio Rising was dangerous. There are few films of its time that has cast a bigger shadow over modern film than Scorpio Rising has. So, no matter what its shortcomings are as a film in 2011, its place in cinema history is assured – and should be respected.

The Best Films I've Never Seen Before: Wavelength (1967)

Wavelength (1967) **
Directed By: Michael Snow.

There are times when a movie critic just has to admit that a certain film is not for them. For me, Michael Snow’s Wavelength is a film like that. I think I understand what this film, generally considered to one of the best Canadian films of all time, and a film that has been called the Birth of a Nation of Structural film, is getting at. I think it even had the effect on me that Snow wanted it to have. For me though, the experience didn’t add up to very much. I get what the film is saying – I’m just not sure why it needed to be said.

Wavelength has been described as one 45 minute zoom shot, but that isn’t actually accurate, as there is definitely some editing in the film – as we can see when at different moments the screen turns different colors, or the simple fact that it quite clearly goes from day to night and back to day again in that 45 minute span. But it appears to be one 45 zoom take, which is the point. Snow positions his camera at one point looking at a large room with four windows along the far wall, and 3 pictures tacked in the middle wall. And gradually the shot gets closer and closer to one of those pictures. There are people in the movie – but the are merely a distraction – simply a way for Snow to play with our expectations of what a film should be. At the beginning of the film we see a woman and some delivery men dropping off some sort of dresser, then the woman and another woman coming in and sitting down and listening to The Beatles Strawberry Fields. Then nothing but the room. At around the half way point, a homeless man enters and apparently drops dead on the floor, where he stays for the rest of the movie – although as the camera zooms, he gradually gets cut out of the frame. Late in the film a woman enters and calls someone, presumably the police, on the phone about the dead body. And finally, the movie ends with one of the pictures – one of waves in the ocean – taking up the entire screen. And then it’s over.

I have just described the entirety of Michael Snow’s Wavelength. I know many of you are probably wondering why this film was made, and why it ranks on a list of the greatest films ever made, as it does. What the point of Wavelength is, I think, is to show the difference between reality and illusion – and how cinema can easily manipulate the truth. If a person were to stand in the same spot for 45 minutes and look in the same direction, then what they saw would never change. They would have the same perception of the room and everything in it. But the camera is different. Throughout the film, we get different views of the same room, because the camera zooms – and suddenly the reality of the room has changed. When it comes right down to the end, it feels like we are at the ocean, or at least looking at the ocean, because the picture takes up the entire frame. But in fact, we are in the same room we have always been in – and the dead body is still on the floor, and nothing has changed except for our perception.

I’m sure that all of this makes for an interesting debate – and I’m sure they’ve had some in various film classes over the years. Had I seen the film in that sort of setting, and had a debate about it afterwards, perhaps I would feel more strongly toward the film. But I don’t. To me, the film, not matter what meanings Snow gives it, or his audience reads into it, is really just a movie about an empty room. I understand why Snow made the film this way – filling it with other people and a plot would distract from his point, so he gives us just enough of it to make us wonder what is happening, to get us to the end of the film. The people are pointless – they don’t need to be there (and in fact some critics have argued that the people are the one flaw in Wavelength, which would have been a more pure film without them). The film, which can be infuriating and boring at the same time, has the precise effect on the audience, or at least it did on me, as Snow wants it to have. He wants us to stare at seemingly nothing for 45 minutes, as that is the only way to make his point.

When it comes to assigning a star rating to a film like Wavelength, I am somewhat tempted to simply throw up my hands and say I have no idea. On one hand, it is precisely the film Snow wanted to make; it makes it point clearly, and had the effect on me that I think Snow wanted to have. On the other hand, it is an extremely boring film about a room that for the most part is completely empty. I have described the film that I saw, and what I think it all means. If you are still reading this, you already know if you want to see this film or not. Something tells me 99% of people fall in the not category.