Nono looked at the sailor’s arse the parts were small and hard, round and smooth, covered with almost a fleece of light brown hairs which continued on round to his thighs and-but there more sparsely spread-up to the small of the back, where his striped vest was just peeping out from the rucked-up jersey. Querelle was waiting, his head bowed and the blood mounting to his face. A few of the illustrations follow below, many more of the series can be found scattered across various websites. Even though copies were seized by the authorities, and the author fined, Cocteau’s involvement did little to harm his public reputation, something that’s impossible to imagine happening elsewhere. Querelle de Brest was published in a limited edition of 525 copies illustrated throughout by Jean Cocteau who didn’t avoid the pornographic details. So in honour of all that, here’s a small collection of Querellerie past and present. The film is still only the briefest sketch of Genet’s novel (although Genet biographer Edmund White enjoyed it) but I like the overheated atmosphere, the phallic set designs, Franco Nero (hey, it’s Django Gay!), and the film as a whole is a fitting memorial to Brad Davis, everyone’s favourite sweating matelot. This weekend’s viewing was Fassbinder’s Querelle (1982) which is marvellous in its new Blu-ray transfer, and a great improvement on the muddy picture of the earlier DVD release.
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