Chichester Cinema at New Park
Tropic of Cancer
Director Joseph Strick is not one to shy away from tough literary adaptations. After his brave adaptations of James Joyce’s masterful ‘Ulysses’ and the author’s first novel, ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’, he continued with Henry Miller’s once-banned, now-legendary ‘Tropic of Cancer’. Considered “unfilmable” by many but in 1970 Strick took a shot at translating it too, and while the nudity is prevalent yet tame by modern standards, the sexual explicitness of the situations (and, especially in Miller’s case, the language) sets ‘Tropic’ apart.
Henry Miller has left his boring job in New York, gone to Paris and without resources devotes himself to becoming a writer. His wife to whom he has been faithful, visits and repelled by his poverty leaves him. He is devastated and takes up chasing women, living on borrowed money and hoping for the best. Miller’s 1934 semi-autobiographical novel about a bawdy expatriate in Paris during the Great Depression was referred to by Ezra Pound as “a dirty book worth reading,” and Strick’s film version, updated and told mostly in unrelated vignettes, supports that observation by keeping most of the author’s brilliantly shocking passages – and imagery – intact.
It stars a startlingly handsome Rip Torn as Miller and a flagrantly nude Ellen Burstyn as his estranged, revolted wife. Whereas Burstyn’s hair and makeup date the then 38-year-old actress, the film itself doesn’t seem dated at all simply because the colours of Miller’s worlds coupled with his colourful expressions of desire make the experience a timeless one.
USA · 
France · 1970 · Joseph Strick · 87min
