In this intimate snapshot of the American author, friends and fellow writers remember his work, exploration of taboos and visions of a freer society.
Henry Miller had five wives and considered himself bound to both the continent of Europe and to the US. This portrait is a close – up of the life of the extraordinary Henry Miller, who, rebellious and narcissistic, entered the realm of the appetites, His legacy is being rediscovered. The fascination he exerts is not only due to his work, which violates all sexual taboos, but also to his eventful life and his still absolutely contemporary view of the world.
Miller broke with existing literary forms and developed a new type of semi-autobiographical novel that blended character study, social criticism, philosophical reflection, stream of consciousness, explicit language, sex, surrealist free association, and mysticism.
After living in Paris in the 1930s, where he engaged in a famous love triangle with author and diarist Anais Nin and his wife June, he returned to the United States and settled in Big Sur, California. Miller’s first two works, Tropic of Cancer (Paris, 1934) and Tropic of Capricorn (Paris, 1939), were denied publication in the U.S. until the early 1960s because of alleged obscenity. The Colossus of Maroussi (1941), a travel book of modern Greece, is considered by some critics his best work. His other writings include the Rosy Crucifixion Trilogy — Sexus (1949), Plexus (1953), and Nexus (1960). In 1976 Norman Mailer edited a selection of Miller’s writings, Genius and Lust.
This documentary portrait is a close-up of the the extraordinary and eventful life of Miller not only at original locations in the United States and France, but also with rare and remastered archive material and in the words of people who knew him – such as Erica Jong, Inge Feltrinelli, Tom Schiller, Jeanne Rejaunier and Georg Stefan Troller. Miller’s son, Tony, opens his private archive for the film. The new insights of his biographer, Arthur Hoyle, (“The Unknown Henry Miller“) afford us today an even more intimate view of the man himself.
Archive material showing Henry Miller in (almost) all situations, and containing significant statements by the writer, lends a uniform look to the documentary – giving it the feel of a film from days gone by.
Henry Miller – Prophet of Desire is now available on Vimeo On Demand and Netflix.