Really Surprised!

This is a small, humorous movie in some ways, but it has a huge heart. What a nice experience.

I enjoyed watching this film and would recommend other to give it a try , (as I am) but this movie, although enjoyable to watch due to the better than average acting fails to add anything new to its storyline that is all too familiar to these types of movies.

Blistering performances.

Tropic of Cancer (1970) *** (out of 4) Good art film has American writer Henry Miller (Rip Torn) traveling through Paris trying to score as much free food and sex that he can get. Along the way he discusses these adventures with his friends as they too are after the same thing. TROPIC OF CANCER is based on the controversial work of Miller and it's easy to see this is a film from the 70s as the decade broke down all sorts of barriers about what could or couldn't be shown in movies. I always enjoy watching this more adult, X-rated films from the 70s because you could argue that cinema was changing during this period as much as it had since silent was passed by sound. The sexuality of the novel are on full display as the film kicks off with non-stop nudity and sexuality and this continues to the very end. I think what will effect people the most is the actually sexual dialogue, which is pretty raw and frank and I'd say that this talk would probably shock people a lot more today than the actual nudity and sex. Torn turns in a pretty good performance as Miller. I've read other opinions stating that he was way over-the-top but I think this was more of the character than the actual performance. Ellen Burstyn, appearing totally nude, is also good as Miller's wife, although she isn't given too much to do. TROPIC OF CANCER has some pretty weird style going in it and I think at times the film is extremely uneven but for the most part it works thanks to the subject matter and performances. This is certainly far from a classic but fans of the sexual liberation of the 70s should enjoy it.

Director Joseph Strick gets props for even attempting to film Henry Miller's expat manifesto. It's unfortunate that it's simply not very cinematic. Rip Torn is Miller, roaming Paris looking for a meal and sex with pretty much every woman he encounters. The film consists mainly of a series of amusing vignettes involving Miller & cronies. There's a certain amount of naughtiness with most of the interest derived from Torn's narration/reading from Miller's racy prose. Torn is fine and Ellen Burstyn plays his not so tolerant wife. James Callahan is outstanding as the least stable of Torn's friends (engaged to a equally unstable Parisian hooker). Strick & co-writer Betty Botley infuse the film with a lot of oddball characters.

Amazingly enough, Rip Torn's slightly off beat personality pretty much carries this film through. He seems to have a "joie de vivre" that seems to perfectly capture the attitude of an american expatriate in Paris. Mostly he fantasizes about older (35+) woman and his real or imagined conquests of them. A few young girls would have helped this film immensely (See "Tales of Ordinary Madness").The older actresses were all very good and spewed forth sexuality, despite their "advanced" years.I am sorry I did not see this when it first came out.

In order to appreciate Henry Miller's style, it is essential to get a feel for the juxtaposition of his elegant, often heartfelt prose, and the profane nature of his subject matter. He is the modern Catullus, the poet not of "lovemaking" but of the joys of flat-out *****ing.The movie had difficulty synthesizing this sense of sacred and profane in harmony. It tried now with a Rip Torn overvoice reading from Miller's work, then with some poetic shots of the beauty of Paris. It never really seemed to succeed.The movie could never find anything to focus on. It represents a string of vignettes, and they don't seem to lead to any common goal. Many scenes seem to concentrate on the minor characters for much too long, and without apparent purpose. Such picaresque efforts rely on the charm of characterization for impact, and this film has some of that, but not enough. It's structured as if somebody said "let's make a film of Tropic of Cancer" without actually feeling any passion for why they wanted to do that.It was certainly interesting to see Rip Torn so young and so good-looking, and to see Ellen Burstyn in such a flagrant display of nudity. Some of the locales are accurately evocative, and Torn is reasonably credible in the lead. It is fairly explicit in the sexual scenes, and extremely explicit in its use of language.You could watch it and not feel you've wasted your time, but be advised that you won't feel much rewarded, either.