director
Peter Bogdanovich
screenwriters
Peter Bogdanovich
Howard Sackler
Paul Theroux
based on
the novel by
Paul Theroux
producers
Roger Corman
George Morfogen
Edward L. Rissien
cinematographer
Robby Muller
editor
William C. Carruth
cast
Ben Gazzara (Jack Flowers)
Denholm Elliott (William Leigh)
Joss Ackland (Yardley)
Rodney Bewes (Smale)
Peter Bogdanovich (Eddie Schuman)
George Lazenby (Senator)
mpaa rating: R
running
time: 112m
u.s.
release: 1979
video
availability: VHS -
DVD
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Ironically, I have the government
of Singapore to thank for introducing me to a movie banned in
Singapore. The Singapore
music/pop-culture magazine BigO approached me to write something
about Saint Jack, a 1979 Peter Bogdanovich drama apparently
deemed unworthy of Singaporean eyes because its depiction of
the seamy, vice-ridden underbelly of Singapore does not reflect
positively on the land. For my part, I'm sorry to admit I had
only the vaguest of awareness of the film, an ignorance shared
by many of my fellow Americans, who are generally not in the
market for a subtle, ambiguous drama starring an erstwhile member
of the John Cassavetes acting stable as, let's say, a main character
not without flaw.
But Saint Jack, adapted
by Bogdanovich, Howard (Jaws) Sackler, Paul Theroux, and
(reportedly) an uncredited Cybill Shepherd from Theroux's novel,
is a surprisingly fine and forceful character study, one that
could really only have been made in the '70s, financed by a group
of rich people who didn't mind losing a little cash (including
co-executive producer Hugh Hefner and producer Roger Corman,
whose New World Pictures distributed the film). It is a non-sensational,
compassionate portrait of a potentially seedy guy and his seedy
world. And, parenthetically, the reason Singapore looks so sleazy
in this film is that the world of whorehouses and bars is its
chosen milieu; we do get some glimpses of what looks like a beautiful
country, but for the most part we are with the protagonist in
his stomping grounds. To object to the film for laying bare this
side of Singapore is like objecting to Taxi Driver for
showing the grotesque side of New York. In both cases, the focus
is on a man who either succeeds or fails to adjust to an unwholesome
environment.
Jack Flowers (Ben Gazzara)
looks like a success, at first. A low-level procurer of exotic
entertainment for tourists, Jack drifts through his days and
nights with an air of nonchalance. He knows the territory, he
knows the people, he knows the business. He always has a kind
word for the working girls he encounters on the streets (they
always seem happy to see him, even when he doesn't slip them
some money or, in one case, a watch right off his wrist); he
deals with his Singaporean connections mostly without condescension
-- at first he acts a little too superior around a frizzy-haired
guy who helps out around the office, but as the film goes on
we realize it's just good-natured ribbing born of years of familiarity.
Jack could be described as a pimp with a heart of gold, except
that he isn't really a pimp -- he's more of a go-between, the
guy who can get it for you, like Morgan Freeman in The Shawshank
Redemption -- and he doesn't really have a "heart of
gold." He's just easy-going and amiable, with a vague sense
of melancholy over paths not taken (we learn he used to want
to be a writer).
Saint Jack is broken up into three sections,
each taking place a year apart, though Bogdanovich never gives
the date (the consensus is that the story spans from 1973 to
1975). The first act finds Jack in an optimistic, hustling mode;
he's trying to start his own house of ill repute, despite resistance
both from "the competition" (thugs follow him around
everywhere) and from friends who warn him against it. By the
second act, Jack is well-established in his new pleasure dome,
but the idyll is not to last. In the third act, Jack has been
given a new lease on life by a mysterious American, a military
man named Schuman (Bogdanovich himself, in a sly performance
that seems modelled on studio execs). Schuman offers Jack a job
supervising an Army-sponsored whorehouse catering to hundreds
of soldiers enjoying R & R during their tour of duty in Vietnam.
What was once fun and a decent day's work for Jack has become
squalid and indecent -- he is now truly a pimp, officially sanctioned
by the U.S. government. When you think about it, this movie is
far more harshly critical of America than it ever is of Singapore.
I can say with some confidence
that Ben Gazzara has never been better than he was here. In the
smallest of gestures -- handing a customer a wallet he's dropped
on the floor, and then smiling bitterly as the customer checks
the wallet to make sure all the money is there; opening a music
box in his room; proudly displaying his forearms to the gangsters
who had tattooed obscene words on them, showing them that he
has covered up the obscenities with flowers -- Gazzara paints
this man for us while never pushing anything too hard or having
any big speeches to explain his character. (About all we learn
about Jack's past is what Schuman rattles off to impress Jack.)
There's a brilliant sequence in which a soldier in Jack's "Army
cathouse" freaks out and attacks one of Jack's girls; Jack
attends to the hysterical girl first, makes sure the other girls
will take care of her, then walks quietly into the room where
the soldier sits numbly on a bed, with several other soldiers
in the room. Jack stares at the soldier wordlessly, and we can
read not only Jack's thoughts and feelings but also the entire
theme of the movie on Gazzara's face. Jack turns and quietly
leaves the room; soon, Schuman will be offering him a much more
unsavory job.
Saint Jack isn't for everyone. It never quite
explodes; it proceeds calmly and realistically from scene to
scene. The lurid environment is seen in a matter-of-fact way,
the way Jack would see it; when a midget gangster shows Jack
a porn magazine he allegedly wants Jack to buy -- complete with
a very X-rated image, which I was fairly shocked to see in an
R-rated movie -- you see just enough to be sure it was what you
thought you saw. Bogdanovich, working again with his former mentor
Roger Corman, delivers an understated and solid piece of direction,
disputing those who think he peaked with The Last Picture
Show and has been good for nothing since except hanging out
with Orson Welles and playing a shrink on The Sopranos.
If this is what he was capable of back then, I wish Corman and
Hefner would team up again and give Bogdanovich money to make
another complex indie film like this.
If you are in Singapore and
reading this, perhaps one day the government will see it has
nothing to fear from Saint Jack and allow its people to
see one of the finer overlooked American pieces from a fine decade;
failing that, if you happen to be sightseeing out of the country,
put this on your "to see" list. If you are anywhere
else -- say, America -- and you haven't seen Saint Jack,
what's your excuse?
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