Quiet Days in Clichy

I am a fan of Henry Miller and have read many of his books. When I saw a DVD of "Quiet Days in Clichy" on my local video store's "Staff Pick's" shelf, I excitedly plucked it off and read the back.

It sounded great, an artistic rendition of one of Miller's works. I took it home practically rubbing my hands.

As the previous reviewer commented, the acting is abysmal. Painful to watch. What a disappointment.

The photography is good. There are some (filming) tricks employed, but do nothing to salvage this failure.

My girlfriend said she'd never seen a porno film, so she dragged me into the cinema to see "Stille Dage i Clichy" in Copenhagen, when the film was new. To say it's a bad film is to overvalue Warhol's "Flesh." It was worse. The only good bit was right at the beginning, with the play on "Gray Day." After that, it was downhill all the way.

The acting was abysmal. The plot... well, what plot? The "Germs won't attack a starving man" scene was memorably sickening. The bonking was overdone and hugely "in your face."

For a poetic film, See "Last Year in Marienbad." Spot the difference.

IMHO, Miller wasn't a particularly good writer. His books did, however, mark a turning-point in censorship. This film, though, has about the same artistic qualities as "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" and "The Toolbox Murders."

When the film ended, though, it was interesting to note that, while the women in the audience stood and put on their cardis and coats, the blokes sat quite still for a minute or so :-) .

I first learned of Henry Miller when he appeared as a witness in Warren Beatty's "Reds", but his name really caught my attention in "Kill Your Darlings", about Allen Ginsberg's college years. In the movie, Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) is interested in Miller's works, but the school bans the students from reading them.

Anyway, I've never read any of Miller's works, but Jens Jørgen Thorsen's "Stille dage i Clichy" ("Quiet Days in Clichy" in English) is a third-degree WTF. While I can't compare it to Miller's novel, I can say that this movie succeeds in being shocking, if lacking a coherent plot. Probably the only movie that I've seen that features any scenes taking place in Luxembourg. But overall, not anything that I would truly recommend, unless you want to hear unusual songs by Country Joe and the Fish.

If you were there at the time the film makes sense. All of the taboos were there to be broken and this one tried to break them all at once just to prove it could get away with it. So there's naked women everywhere (in poses 'pushing out the envelope' of the day), bad language and lavatorial humour in abundance. My guess is that the producers were so fixated on pushing back the boundaries of the then conventional taste, that even the most the most rudimentary craftsmanship was contemptuously discarded.

So it's a pity that the acting is terrible, wit is noticeable by its absence and the nudes aren't really all that exciting. Some gross outs can be amusing. These ones were not.

With very little effort this could have been so much more fun and put one over on the wicked establishment at the same time.

Watch 'I Am Curious' instead. It's (they're) no great shakes but much better than this.

Pretty funny and trashy take on Miller's vision. The sex in this movie makes The Room love scenes to look like high art. For example the almost total absence of doggystyle position, I don't know if it was a censorship issue but it seems stupid to watch this Italian Stalion softcore sex over and over. The guy playing Miller does a rather awful job anyway. He might be an interesting person himself but he is no Henry Miller that is for sure! Anyway, the movie is oversexed in a silly way like if someone saw American Psycho as only being about physical violence for example. Thus in a way it is a weird take on Miller to make it about sex. Miller had a number of other interests such as philosophy.