The Henry Miller Odyssey, a fantastic biographical film directed in 1969 by documentarian Robert Snyder is told in Henry Miller’s own words as the embattled, passionate, often censored and eventually celebrated author discusses formative moments in his life. He includes encounters with his unhappy, overbearing mother, the influence of the streets of his Brooklyn upbringing and the liberating feeling of walking out of his job at Western Union to once and for all make his living as an author in 1924. As Miller recounts his own biographical narrative with the still strong New York accent of a serious scrapper, the septuagenarian author adds frequent words of wisdom about finding strength through humiliation and transcending the world’s absurdities through struggle, intimate encounters with creative minds and sheer determination.

Highpoints of the film include Miller’s reading of a long passage from his 1936 novel, Black Spring and then visiting a variety of locations around Paris that were important to him during his early, often grueling but productive years as an indomitable writer living by his wits and his bootstraps and sometimes literally starving in pursuit of his art. Miller later discusses his room in the Villa Seurat where he wrote many of his major works including the third and fourth drafts of Tropic of Cancer, along with Tropic of Capricorn and Black Spring. During the course of the film Miller meets with several Parisian compatriots including Alfred Perlès (on whom the character named Carl in Quiet Days in Clichy was based) and engages in lively and philosophical discussions with his former lover and muse, Anaïs Nin. Contemporary footage of Parisian street life is interspersed with Miller’s musings providing a genuine feel for how the city itself became such a large part of his writing and belief system.
 

 
Miller seems genuine and candid. He’s animated and full of life and ideas. He comes across as a man who’s overcome years of hardship and is enjoying the life of the mind that he’s (to hear him tell it) earned for himself. 

The Henry Miller Odyssey is one of four films that director Robert Snyder made about Henry Miller. Snyder (who incidentally was married to Buckminster Fuller’s daughter, Allegra) also made Henry Miller: Reflections On Writing, Henry Miller Reads and Muses and a film called Henry Miller: To Paint Is To Love Again that was completed in 2004 after Snyder’s death.