Cinema
Quiet Days in Clichy
Stille dage i Clichy
Jens Jørgen Thorsen · 1970
Synopsis
In Clichy, in the late sixties, two penniless young men, the American writer Joey, a double of Henry Miller, and his European friend Carl, share an apartment. They eat little and devote what time and money they have to chasing women, neighbours, passers-by or foreigners. A surrealist artist comes to paint slogans on the walls of their bathroom; in a café, Joey meets Nys, to whom he leaves everything he owns, and ends up wandering the streets, starving.
Context
The film adapts the narrative that Henry Miller published in 1956, moving its action from the thirties to the very time of the shooting. Written by the director, shot in black and white and widescreen by Jesper Høm, spoken mostly in English, it has for music songs by Country Joe McDonald and the saxophone of Ben Webster, who appears in it. It was released in Denmark on 1 June 1970, banned for under-sixteens, a year after the country had authorised pornographic images. Claude Chabrol made another film from the same book, released in 1990.
Who it is for
A little over an hour and a half, mostly in English. A very explicit erotic film, which strings together encounters rather than following a plot.
Prizes and reception
Seized for obscenity in the United States in 1970, it was cleared by a federal court; the erotic wave of those years brought it wide international attention.
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