SnoReptilePlenty Memorable, crazy movie

Brightlyme i know i wasted 90 mins of my life.

Seraherrera The movie is wonderful and true, an act of love in all its contradictions and complexity

Robert Joyner The plot isn't so bad, but the pace of storytelling is too slow which makes people bored. Certain moments are so obvious and unnecessary for the main plot. I would've fast-forwarded those moments if it was an online streaming. The ending looks like implying a sequel, not sure if this movie will get one

MARIO GAUCI I only heard about this when the Blue Underground DVD first came out; of course, I was aware of controversial author Henry Miller, on whose novel the film was based - whose work, incidentally, was contemporaneously being transposed to celluloid for the first time via the late Joseph Strick's TROPIC OF CANCER (1970). Anyway, it was merely a coincidence that I ended up acquiring the two film versions of the book (the other being the 1990 adaptation by Claude Chabrol) virtually simultaneously! Since I was going through a retrospective of that director's work anyway, I decided to check this one beforehand; well, I am glad that my generally negative reaction to it did not give me second thoughts about passing on the remake (as the latter was a more rewarding, and altogether different, experience – but more on that in its own review)! Anyway, I have never been fond of Erotica per se and this is pretty much what one got here: some critics praised the kaleidoscopic style adopted here (actually borrowed from Richard Lester) but this particular approach dates the film more than anything else. Besides, it is further bogged down by the lack of a proper plot (a fault which is much better disguised in the later version), revolting detail (the graphic sexuality on display got it banned in the U.S. on original release – atypically, this is a Danish picture shot in the English language and black-and-white) and characters who seem to have crawled from under rocks (especially the two leads)! In essence, we follow the dreary and over-sexed exploits of two penniless bohemians (the more studious-looking of whom is supposed to be an alter-ego for the author himself); they become involved with several women, of various ages and nationalities, and not even that good-looking in many cases. Eventually, they both become attached to someone in particular but, with respect to the protagonist's companion, the girl in question is a 14-year old half-wit!; in the end, the film just ends abruptly as if its makers had suddenly run out of money themselves…or film stock or, quite simply, ideas! However, the eclectic score is a big plus – some of it typically French and the rest comprised of numerous conceptual songs by Country Joe (McDonald) of the psychedelic and radical "Country Joe & The Fish" band fame.

Robert J. Maxwell I don't know about this one. The point, if there was one, seemed to get by me. Multiple references to the film's source, Henry Miller's eponymous novel, don't help much. Much of Miller's appeal comes not just from his go-to-hell attitude towards life and art but from the way he expresses his sentiments on the page. Maybe he just doesn't translate well to the screen, not that Miller himself would care one way or the other.The street words that Miller flung about so carelessly in his prose seem emphasized here, as if designed expressly to shock. Not just the F word either. Well the street words are old and established. Shakespeare worked a terrible pun on the C word into one of his comedies, I forget which. The F word goes back to the Angles and the Saxons or the Mooks and the Gripes or somebody. Wait a minute -- the C word was also worked into a pun in "Hamlet," come to think of it."I feel like going out and getting myself a fatal dose of clap." Well, no kidding. Are we supposed to be shocked? Maybe we were, back in 1970, if we had blue hair and lived in Dogpatch, USA.If Henry Miller doesn't add much cachet, neither do Country Joe and the Fish, whose music whangs away on the sound track with lyrics that are as pointlessly vulgar as the horribly dubbed dialog.Ben Webster is okay, though. And the photography, though irritatingly grainy, is several steps removed from the billowing pastels of soft-core porn. It's honestly black and white, and the naked bodies, of which there are plenty, aren't painted, trimmed, or shaved. If the babe has a pimple anywhere, you see the pimple. And the guys are bald on top and hairy everywhere else. A for sincerity there.The story goes no place. There is no story. People run around half naked on the streets of Paris, flapping their arms and panting, supposedly having a great time. Half a dozen ordinary-looking people slosh around in a tub pouring wine over one another and laughing giddily because the director told them to act as if they were having the grandfather of all good times. (The French do this joi de vivre stuff better.) In the first scene of the film, the bespectacled hero, a pallid imitation of Miller, picks up a girl in a café and, after sex, gives her all his money, can't get any more credit at the restaurants, and is forced to raid his own garbage pail for leftover nuggets. Plenty of sex but not enough food. That's how a viewer feels after watching this.I wish this movie had been better. It was dumped on for obscenity, but the sexual and linguistic candor was at least an innovation in a mainstream movie. It deserves dismissal, true, but only because it lacks any substance. As it is, it stands as an historical curiosity.

tedg Context is everything. If you come to this cold, you will think it an amateurish production of an artless man and his life.Miller's reason to be in our life was his place in moving a barrier of sexual prudishness to a more defensible location. Thus for a decade or so, the arbiters of art celebrated his boldness and the marketplace of prurience sprinkled him about, ensuring that he is "read." Now, his life seems merely feckless and his art artless.So if you accept this as it was intended and received when new, you'll be disappointed. All the gas has gone out of that excuse for our time. But I saw this together with "La Dolce Vita." That film is sublimely competent, a beautiful receptacle whose beauty amplifies its emptiness. So too is the story, about beautiful people with empty lives, people we would just as soon never existed.So take this as a beat version of that film. Accept its provenance, as a film by a hippie painter, and its proximity to the actual Miller and his actual, now completely worthless life. Take it that way and it works.If you take out the sex scenes, the actual humping, you get a rather well conceived portrait. Its a collection of sequences, each sequence defined by the woman or women who were the target of that sexual encounter. Each woman exists only as a receptacle.One involves a runaway retarded girl of fifteen who provides a specific type of sexual availability. I suppose all the events in this film actually happened, but the way she is depicted surely references "Lolita," a sort of 800 pound gorilla or sexual literature. The point with Lolita was the untrusted narrator. Here, its more like "Withnail," an untrusted life.The other notable woman is the last one. She really is lovely, almost precisely a cross between Anita Ekberg and Nico, both of "la Dolce." This woman has two children. Her husband is dead. She comes home with Miller and lays down nude with him to have sex, then balks. He pursues her, almost raping, but she escapes. Its the perfect end, as far from erotic as one can get. Has very much a Fellini manner, that sequence, allowing for the music.So the striking thing about this is the same as in Fellini's film. There's a fantasy involved, but it is not the romantic fantasy that film usually supports and perhaps invented. Its the opposite of that fantasy: a life without a happy ever after.As with Fellini, some of the compositions are superb.Ted's Evaluation -- 2 of 3: Has some interesting elements.

m-prior-1 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.