Quiet Days in Clichy
Suffused with the improvisational playfulness of the French New Wave and brimming with naked flesh and explicit scenes, Jens Jorgen Thorsen's freewheeling adaptation of Henry Miller'snotorious noveloffered a different kind of American in Paris and pushed the boundaries of sex on the screen. America pushed back: the film was seized on charges of obscenity in 1970 and condemned by the Catholic bishops review board. Though hardly tame by modern standards, it's less an underground classic than a curious timepiece. Paul Valjean is a colorless star, and behind the hedonism and erotic adventures is a chauvinist portrait of sexual relations (Philip Kaufman'sHenry and Juneoffers a more interesting take on Miller). SeeQuiet Days in Clichyfor the marvelous black and white images of late-1960s Paris, an energetic supporting cast (many of them actual Parisian streetwalkers, according to legend), and Country Joe McDonald's ribald songs.--Sean Axmaker