With summer here I am looking forward to:

There are number of remarkable things about the documentary "Chris & Don: A Love Story," not the least of which is the film's 16mm footage of two gay men proudly showing their affection for each other in public - in the early 1950s.

What's even more extraordinary about their love story is that it began when one of the men, portrait artist Don Bachardy, was 18 years old and the other, British author Christopher Isherwood, was 48.

But, at age 74, watching himself defy the boundaries of what constituted a socially acceptable love life is hardly what Bachardy is most impressed with. Because he can hardly believe that the reels still exist.

"All of that film was just sitting in a closet at our home for decades," Bachardy says, sitting on a sofa in the Gertrude Stein suite at San Francisco's boutique Rex Hotel, discussing the documentary that opens Friday in theaters. "It's much to my amazement that it hadn't faded or deteriorated. The images are all as brilliant as when they were new."

Which is precisely the way to describe Bachardy, be it in 1952 or 2008.

The ever-healthy, strong and even-tanned artist has a youthful spirit that obviously was the same when he was a teenager partying with Hollywood movie stars and his older boyfriend's famous friends. But that's not to say that this wise old man has never changed.

"Sometimes movies make me aware of the passage of time much more than time itself," Bachardy says, looking quite natural in what could typically be a younger man's wardrobe of an Old Navy T-shirt, slim-fit jeans and leather sandals. "There Chris and I are looking our best in the 1950s. Chris gets older and eventually dies. I go through all kinds of weird hairdos and mustaches and get older, too. One can look in the mirror every day and not really know what one looks like until one see oneself on film. It made me realize exactly what being in my 70s means - visually."

Spiritually, Bachardy had that figured out a long time ago - thanks, in large part, to Isherwood.

They met at a beach party in the early '50s in Los Angeles, where Bachardy spent his childhood idolizing movie stars and collecting autographs at Hollywood premieres. By then, Isherwood was already a well-established author who had left Europe just before World War II. Not surprisingly, their unconventional relationship was condemned by many in 1950s America. As years and then decades passed, it became increasingly clear that their partnership was no fling. Closeted gay celebrities envied and admired Bachardy and Isherwood's open and honest relationship.

Italian filmmaker Guido Santi wanted to make the documentary after Bachardy, then a recent friend, showed Santi the 16mm footage.

Santi began working on the film 10 years ago with his then-wife, Julia Scott. After the couple divorced, the documentary was put on hold. Santi later made several attempts to obtain grants to fund the film, but they all fell short. In 2004, he and his friend Tina Mascara decided to co-direct the film and charge the expenses to their credit cards.

"I had heard all about Don from Guido," Mascara says. "But from the first moment I actually met him, I was like most who meet him: I was so enthralled and just wanted to know more."

The documentary is divided into segments featuring the vintage footage, still photographs and interviews with Bachardy in the couple's longtime home. Scenes are also intertwined with the voice of British actor Michael York reading unpublished excerpts of Isherwood's diary. Santi and Mascara found it challenging to balance what could easily have become three documentaries: one about the couple's audacious relationship, one about Bachardy's struggle to get out of his famous lover's shadow and become an artist in his own right and one about the death of Isherwood. "Chris & Don" sticks with the simpler story line that ties them all together: love.

"I think Chris and Don have a beautiful love story that goes beyond gender, beyond sexuality, beyond age, beyond anything," Santi says. "It's a story that anybody can relate to."

Isherwood's death from prostate cancer in 1986 is illustrated in the film through Bachardy's hundreds of portraits. It was Isherwood who first recognized Bachardy's talent as a portrait artist and sat as his first model when Bachardy was 18. In part to have something to do during Isherwood's final months, Bachardy insisted on painting his soul mate daily.

Bachardy continued to do so even on the day Isherwood died. On that final day, as Bachardy waited for the doctor to pick up Isherwood's body, Bachardy willed himself to paint 11 portraits.

"Chris was my very first sitter when I began at 18," says Bachardy, who folds his arms and clutches his biceps when speaking on emotional subjects. "I had done so many versions of him, and it was always a challenge to present some new aspect of him and approach him as a subject in a fresh way."

The final portraits were the most challenging.

"The image got further and further away from Chris until, finally, that last drawing didn't look like him at all," Bachardy says. "I could hardly find him. There were salient features: His nose was still his nose, his eyebrows still his eyebrows. But that spark, that vitality, that soul of the sitter was fading by the minute."

Isherwood often told Bachardy that he wasn't afraid of death but rather of dying in a hospital. Long aware of the likelihood that Isherwood would die first, Bachardy was proud to have helped fulfill his wish to die at home.

About a year after Isherwood died, Bachardy had a relationship with a man 26 years his junior that lasted for a decade. Bachardy says he felt ill prepared to handle situations that he had always been on the other side of. These days, Bachardy is in his first relationship with someone close to his own age.

Being in San Francisco on Pride Weekend, Bachardy took a moment to reflect on how much things have changed.

"We gays have a lot to be proud of," he says. "If Chris and I had been told when we first met how much would be achieved in 55 years, we would have been astonished. There's a great deal of advancement to take pride in. Yeah. We should do a lot of parading."

Source: SFGate

E-mail Delfín Vigil at dvigil@sfchronicle.com.