(1970, English and French) "Above all - the ecstasy." Adapted from Henry Miller's 1934 erotic autobiographic novel (banned as obscene in the US for 30 years) by director Joseph Strick from a screenplay co-written with Betty Botley, this concupiscent comedic film version takes place in the late '60s in Paris.

Played by Rip Torn, Henry Miller (who also narrates in a sardonic, indelicate, incandescent language, earning an NC-17 rating: "This, then, this is not a movie. This is a libel, slander, defamation of character, a prolonged insult, a gob of spit in the face of art, a kick in the pants to God, man, destiny, time, love, beauty, what you will. I'm going to sing for you. A little off-key perhaps, but I will sing. I will sing while you croak. I will dance over your dirty corpse") mooches and cadges from his pals, flatters men and seduces the wives of other expatriates, such as Tania and Sylvester, for food, a room in which to sleep, and sex.

When his wife Mona (Ellen Burstyn) arrives from New York for a lusty visit, after failing to land a part as an actress, she soon leaves Henry (in "the abyss into which Satan was plunged") after spending a night in a sordid hotel with bedbugs and no bath.

After a brief stint as an instructor at a boys' school in Dijon - teaching them conversational English by discussing "the physiology of love" among large mammals - the impoverished libidinous lothario moves in with his friend Fillmore (James T. Callahan), who has money his mother sends him, through whom Henry's introduced to a Russian princess with gonorrhea ("Americans, they have no manners at all") and later, while Fillmore's in the hospital, his marriage-hungry fiancée Ginette (Laurence Lignères), who is pregnant (though Yvette, claiming to be a spy for the police, says she's not pregnant, just a common whore).

Other women include Vite Cheri, with a permanent vacancy sign on her vagina; Germaine, another whore with rundown heels who takes enormous pride in her "rosebush"; and a German girl Elsa, a pianist who likes penises ("men use me"), he seduces while living in a flat with another buddy Boris.

Along with proofreading for the Paris Herald, Henry's hired to escort a young Indian man about the city; he takes Ranji to a bordello where the fellow unacquainted with a bidet misuses it as a toilet. Each calling the others "Joe," Henry listens to his pals VanNorden (Phil Brown) and Carl (David Baur), whom he helps woo a rich older woman Iréne ("If only she were ten years younger") with epistles and borrowed lines from Keats, swapping lies about their fantasies.

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