Overview: Joey is a struggling writer with no money. His roommate Carl is a charming stud with a taste for young girls. Together, these two insatiable dreamers will laugh, love and screw their way through a decadent Paris paved with wanton women, wild orgies and outrageous erotic adventures.

Based upon the long-banned novel by Henry Miller and featuring a hit soundtrack by rock legend Country Joe McDonald, QUIET DAYS IN CLICHY is considered to be the most daring film adaptation ever of one of the most controversial authors in history.

4K UHD Blu-ray Verdict: In May of 1970, the United States Government seized the only English-language prints of QUIET DAYS IN CLICHY on charges of obscenity. And while it was ultimately cleared in Federal Court, the film mysteriously disappeared shortly after its release.

Now more than 50 years later, this landmark adults only classic can be seen in a brand-new restoration, scanned in 4K 16-bit from its recently discovered uncut and uncensored original fine-grain negative, with Dolby Vision HDR and DTS-HD Master Audio!

I first learned of Henry Miller when he appeared as a witness in Warren Beatty’s Reds, but his name really caught my attention in Kill Your Darlings, about Allen Ginsberg’s college years. In the movie, Ginsberg (Daniel Radcliffe) is interested in Miller’s works, but the school bans the students from reading them.

Anyway, I’ve never read any of Miller’s works, but Jens Jørgen Thorsen’s Stille dage i Clichy (Quiet Days in Clichy, in English) is a third-degree WTF!

While I can’t compare it to Miller’s novel, I can say that this movie succeeds in being shocking, if lacking a coherent plot. Probably the only movie that I’ve seen that features any scenes taking place in Luxembourg, overall, not anything that I would truly sit down and watch with someone else (although it admittedly has some unusual songs by Country Joe and the Fish to listen to!)

OK, so what will you see if you yourselves dive headfirst into this creatively nuanced film? Well, 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).

And, in the first scene alone, 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!

That all said, if you remove all the sex scenes, the actual humping, you get a rather well conceived portrait. It’s 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, it’s 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. It’s the perfect end, as far from erotic as one can get, I guess.

Special Features:
WORLD PREMIERE! New 4K 16-Bit Restoration from its recently discovered uncut & uncensored original fine-grain negative
UHD features 2160p Ultra HD Resolution and Dolby Vision HDR, with DTS-HD Master Audio
Remastered Blu-ray features 1080p HD Resolution, with DTS-HD Master Audio
Ultra HD Blu-ray (2160p) and HD Blu-ray (1080p) Widescreen 1.66:1 feature presentations
Audio: 1.0 DTS-HD (English)
Subtitles: English SDH, Francais, Espanol
Songs of Clichy – Interview with Country Joe McDonald
Dirty Books, Dirty Movies: Barney Rosset on Henry Miller – Interview with Henry Miller’s editor and publisher Barney Rosset
Midnight Blue Interview with Barney Rosset
NEW! Deleted Scene
NEW! Theatrical Trailer
NEW! Poster & Still Gallery
NEW! Book Cover Gallery
NEW! Court Documents