(out of
four)
By David N. Butterworth
Director Joseph Strick is not one to shy away from tough literary adaptations.
In 1967 his camera wandered the streets of Dublin, following Milo O'Shea as Leopold
Bloom, the central figure of James Joyce's masterful Ulysses. A dozen years later
Strick took another stab at adapting an immortal Joycean tome for the screen, the author's
first novel, Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man.
Like those two unassailable works, Henry Miller's once-banned, now-legendary Tropic
of Cancer was considered "unfilmable" by many but in 1970 Strick took a shot
at translating it too, and the film is now seeing a re-release paired with Bernardo
Bertolucci's once-banned, now-legendary Last Tango in Paris. Both films are rated
NC-17 today 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 both Tropic
and Tango apart.
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.
The film opens abruptly, a roman candle of golden sparks pouring forth from a bidet
under the stark, matter-of-fact titles: "Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller." Cut
to Miller on a Paris sidewalk, bumming change. French francs to feed his
habit–prostitutes. Miller wanders city streets, past huge abandoned oil refineries,
and over the Seine, talking to himself, in his head, that inner Miller voice, that
voiceover narration that quotes huge chunks of Miller's unprintable dialogue, dialogue
that alternately worships and condemns the exposed female form. He hooks up with friends,
associates, and lots and lots of women. He boozes, he bleeds a little (metaphorically
speaking), he beds the women all.
While the tone and temperament of Miller's tale is retained, Tropic of Cancer is
really a book to be savored at the turn of each page, not viewed as a cinematic treatment
or interpretation. Nevertheless, it is fun watching Torn (who's very good: a raised
eyebrow here, a boisterous belly laugh there) drink and whore and sleaze his shabby way
through life with equal amounts of good humor and worthlessness. Burstyn's contributions
are brief but memorable. Credited as Ellen McRae, Tropic of Cancer was an early
film role for her (hence, presumably, her rare display of nakedness), one which came right
before her big break as the female lead in Peter Bogdanovich's The Last Picture Show.
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 colors of Miller's worlds coupled with his
colorful expressions of desire make the experience a timeless one.
