"Tropic of Cancer" Revisited

When I Arrived in Paris last summer to watch the filming of Tropic of Cancer, the city lay under a hot spell worse than any I remembered from the ten years I had lived there. But despite the heat, despite the traffic, despite the invasion of tourists--and even despite the ugly, characterless clusters of modern apartments--Paris looked better to me than it ever had. Today's Parisians are privileged to look upon a city that only their ancestors knew. The effect of dazzling sunshine on her old buildings, now restored to their pristine hue, is striking and heartwarming.

In a way, the film of Tropic of Cancer does the same thing to my memories. I had hardly arrived at my hotel when I was summoned to the shooting of a scene in a night spot on a narrow little street called Passage du Départ off the Rue d'Odessa. The Jungle, as the night club is called, is even more picturesque than the old Jockey Club--the scene of the original incident--on the Boulevard Raspail. That is to say, it is even more dilapidated, more woebegone. I was delighted. And there on the dance floor was my double, Rip Torn, cavorting with the prostitute with whom he is later to have a strange experience. It was a pleasure to see myself looking 30 or more years younger, more handsome, more seductive, more vital. The actress, Dominique Delpierre, was certainly far better looking than any prostitute--including Mademoiselle Claude--I had ever met in the old days. In fact, everything--people, cafés, bordellos--looked better to me than what I had known when writing the book. This was evidence that Paris had changed, as do we all. It was understood from the beginning, of course, that there would be no attempt to re-create the Paris of the Thirties. Perhaps, too, some of the "plush" quality was due to the use of color film. This was one of the first things I had to adjust to. As for the characters, the friends and acquaintances I had lived with and described in the book, that problem I had anticipated and was reconciled to in advance; one can't expect a film director to revive the dead.

Another element to adjust to were the rushes. I had never seen rushes before. I found it tedious and confusing to watch a few millimeters of film at a time done over and over again from every angle. I wondered, viewing them, how movie actors manage to repeat their performance again and again, particularly emotional scenes, without going crazy. It seems preposterous to me that after a long, hard day's work, a picture advances only about two minutes of screen time a day. Imagine a writer being forced to write only one or two paragraphs a day!

But I had to admire the smooth, efficient way the director, Joseph Strick, managed things. I never saw him lose his temper: He was completely cool, firm, polite, able to extract the maximum from actors and crew alike. Obviously, he was not only respected but liked as well. The cameraman was Alain de Robe, who knew his job and relished it. He impressed me as a sort of high priest who knew exactly how, when and where each ceremony should be conducted. He moved about swiftly and noiselessly. No barking, no shouting, no screaming. He was scrupulous, meticulous, exacting--but never irritating. He knew what he wanted and he knew how to get it done. Perhaps the most interesting ceremony he officiated at was the baptism of his child in the old St. Eustache church beside the market place. It was a rather long service in a lugubrious setting, manipulated by De Robe as if it were another sequence from the script. (In the gathering, uninvited, to be sure, were two old hags whom I later learned were a tribulation to the priest. Every day, it seems, they managed to sneak into the church and do their little jobs: One made pipi against a column, the other made caca near the altar.)

Riding to the set the first day, I suddenly recalled my long bike rides of 1932 and 1933 from the Porte de Clichy to Louveciennes, where my friend Anaïs Nin, the novelist, then lived. The narrow gravel path for (continued on page 200)"Cancer" Revisited(continued from page 135) cyclists was still there, though not in the same condition as of old. I used to stop at Malmaison for a brief rest and a cool drink. I always thought of Napoleon as I quaffed my beer and sometimes, as a gesture of respect, I doffed my cap and bowed in the direction of the château.

For a variety of reasons, many of the scenes or locations mentioned in Tropic of Cancer had to be shot in other places. Some of the substitutions were exciting. One, for instance, in Montmartre, where the protagonist and his wife escape to a clean hotel after an invasion of bedbugs in some other hotel. What a charming spot, the Place Emile Goudeau, with its Hôtel Paradis! Having missed this sequence because of my late arrival in Paris, I came upon it accidentally one afternoon after a visit to the Place du Tertre with Rip Torn. The whole neighborhood sanctified my memories of the good old days when Picasso and Max Jacob shared their poverty together. The atmosphere of the Place was one of calm and peace, unspoiled by the passage of time: in the middle of the raised Place a tiny fountain, giving the illusion of coolness and tranquillity; from the street below, the lame and the halt trudging stiffly up the steep stairs to seek a bench under a spreading tree; at the corners of the surrounding streets, groups of young Japanese squatting on the pavement, sketching the dilapidated old buildings with their toothless windows and grimacing façades. The old and ever-young Montmartre, alluring always to poets and painters everywhere.

One day, just as we were passing Nanterre, the chauffeur provided for me by the film company asked if I would care to see Bidonville on the skirts of the town. I have seen plenty of ghettos in my time and just before reaching Paris, I had paid a visit to London's East End, which is still a horror. But I have never seen anything to equal this town of empty tins, as the name implies. One couldn't even call them shacks, these contraptions that serve as dwellings for the miserable squatters of the region. Ghastly deathtraps, all of them. No heat, no gas, no toilets, sometimes no roofs. Water only from a standpipe near the road. From the road, this collection of "dwellings" resembled the forgotten ruins of some ancient village wracked by war and pestilence. Here live the outcasts of society, the forgotten men and women of our time. France, of course, is not unique in this regard. Almost all of America's big cities flaunt the near equivalent. The difference, possibly, is that our ratholes, our deathtraps, are knuckled into the very heart of the city. Tropic of Cancer, with its jolly premonitions of doom and destruction, was a quarter of a century ahead of its time. The cancer was there, but we refused to recognize it. Now we are living it.

I don't know of any neighborhood in any city I have ever lived in that gives me the same deep, nostalgic feeling as the Quartier de Vanves back of the Avenue du Maine in Montparnasse. It was in this quarter that I spent much of my time in the early days of my long stay in Paris. Every time I return, I make for this neighborhood to visit old friends, old cafés, old restaurants. Though a few buildings have been torn down and others remodeled, it seemed to me as I walked the streets again that nothing had really changed. Streets like the Rue Vercingétorix, where Gauguin once had a studio with his Japanese mistress; or the Rue Raymond Losserand, formerly the Rue de Vanves, where I once lived; or the Rue Francis de Pressensé, where my old Russian friend Eugene Pachoutinsky still lives, are all engraved in memory. Though I suffered from want, my remembrance of those days is shot through with joy. There I learned what friendship means. I came as a stranger and was received with open arms. I had no name as a writer. I was just a nobody, like most of the other inhabitants. I was accepted by le peuple, which means far more to me than to be accepted by the elite. As every foreigner soon gets to know, le peuple in France is France.

This digression about the common people leads me back to the film, to an individual who played an insignificant role and to whom I was attracted from the moment we met. I refer to Alfred Baillou, who played the part of a night watchman at the lycée in Dijon. He was what one might call an ordinary Frenchman, if there is such a thing, and yet--I hope the other members of the cast will forgive me--the most interesting person I had the pleasure of conversing with during my visits to the set. Afflicted as a boy by some strange ailment, he had been bedridden for ten years. When he recovered, he learned to do all the things a normal person could do, despite his very short stature and curvature of the spine. Eventually, he found his way into the films, playing all manner of strange roles and performing stunts that were daring and foolhardy. At any rate, as I shook hands with him on our first meeting, I felt that I was gazing into the face of an angel. I sensed immediately that he was an unusual individual; the rapport was instantaneous. His face was luminous, his expression always radiant. We talked as people talk who have known each other for years. I found that he had traveled far and wide, that he had found illumination in India and that, like myself, he was drawn to the arcane and the occult.

Readers of Tropic of Cancer may recall that I devoted some of the most poetic passages in the book to the scene in which the night watchman at the lycée in Dijon makes his rounds. Here, now, in the person of Monsieur Baillou was that silent guardian of the peace. (Unfortunately, owing to the limitations imposed by the film, he was deprived of his romantic setting. One catches only glimpses of him on the screen, opening and shutting the door for someone.)

I must also say a word in passing about Ellen Burstyn, who played the role of Mona. During our conversations at Malmaison, I was surprised and delighted to discover how penetrating was her understanding of the character I had painted in the book. She had followed her throughout the other books in which she appears and, I gathered, had identified with her. Physically and in other ways, I discovered that there were some striking resemblances between her and the real Mona. In one of our talks, she ventured the opinion that to her, Mona was the most wonderful woman--or the most complete portrait of a woman--she had ever encountered in her reading. I mention this because my European readers are constantly writing me to inquire whatever happened to the real Mona. Women, particularly, seem to be fascinated by her. From these letters, I get the impression that Mona lived to the full what most women only dream of doing. In her, they find completion. To those who are still curious about this character, let me add that an opportunity will soon be given them to see a photograph of the real Mona as once she was--in a documentary film by Robert Snyder called The Henry Miller Odyssey.

In every interview, and I gave many during those two months of filming, I was asked the same question: How do you find Paris today? I think it must be obvious that I find it still the same magical place it has been for centuries. Is it different? Certainly. But only on the surface. We, too, have changed, and not only on the surface. More and more, we are losing our ability to see things in their true light, to see as the poet or the painter sees. A city that does not change is dead. But even a dead city--Brugge, for example--can be exciting. What makes a city is the spirit of its inhabitants. The Parisian remains a Parisian, no matter how conditions change, no matter how much alien blood is injected into his veins. Either you like the type or you don't. He doesn't give a damn how you take him--that's your problem.

And then people asked: How on earth can they ever make a film of Tropic of Cancer? The implication is twofold: first, that the book had no plot, no direction, no structure; second, that the sex scenes could never be shown on the screen. Today, neither of these charges holds water. Indeed, it is possible that a public that has been feeding on raw meat will find Tropic of Cancer tame, even innocent, like the author himself. One thing that I suspect audiences will not find tame, however, is the narration, taken word for word from the book. The eye may have grown accustomed to strange sights on the screen, but I am not so sure that the ear has had its fill of such straight language.

From all the controversy ensuing over the book's publication back in 1934, the public got the impression, I believe, that it was banned because it was a dirty, sordid piece of literature infested with gutter types who had no sense of shame or decency. There were critics who pretended that such language, such behavior, existed only in the diseased mind of the author. The serious and the comic nature of the book was ignored. But the film has preserved both these aspects of the book; the result of this fresh impact on the public remains to be seen. I hope it will be amiable; but if not, well, it won't be the first time. And I trust it won't be the last.