Saint Jack (USA, 1979) 115 min color DIR: Peter Bogdanovich. PROD: Roger Corman. SCR: Peter Bogdanovich, Howard Sackler, Paul Theroux, based on Theroux’s novel. DOP: Robby Müller. CAST: Ben Gazzara, Denholm Elliott, George Lazenby, James Villiers, Joss Ackland, Lisa Lu, Peter Bogdanovich. (New World Pictures)
This adaptation of Paul Theroux’s novel is a return to form for director Peter Bogdanovich, after a string of vanity projects that flopped (Daisy Miller; At Long Last Love; Nickelodeon). Ironically, he came back to Roger Corman (who jump-started his career in the first place) to make his comeback picture, which is one of the director’s finest achievements, and one of the last truly great movies of the 1970s. Saint Jack is also one of the most prestigious pictures ever put out by New World Pictures under Corman’s reign: once again, this is an example of the company’s schizophrenic nature to satisfy both high and low cultures by producing an equal balance of art house and exploitation pictures. (Amusingly, Hugh Hefner is credited as co-executive producer- Playboy Enterprises owned the rights to the novel.)
Ben Gazzara gives one of his finest performances as American expatriate Jack Flowers, a pimp and brothel owner in Vietnam-era Singapore, who faces some unexpected career changes. The film is essentially told in three acts: each begun by an annual visit from businessman William Leigh (Denholm Elliott, also excellent). And as we revisit their male bonding (insinuating, but never fully realizing their possible attraction to one another), these moments are chapters beginning another step in the decline of Jack’s empire. No doubt Gazzara was hired because his role is vaguely similar to that of club owner Cosmo Vitelli in Cassavetes’ The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (in fact Bogdanovich had a cameo role in that director’s film, Opening Night, which also starred Gazzara). His role is full of the complexity that most scripts starve for. Even a moment where he is telling colourful stories to sailors are richly rewarding.
Most surprising about Jack is his great restraint. When moments of violence erupt in his brothel, or when the Triad destroys his business and tattoos his arms, he often reacts with a kind of Zen calm that is actually more disturbing than if he would respond with an eye for an eye. One wonders why this expatriate would spend time in such an environment, but an early scene (in which he takes some clients to a striptease done to Shirley Bassey’s “Goldfinger”), and with Robby Müller’s moody photography, we perfectly understand the trashy allure of his surroundings.
Bogdanovich is actually quite good having cast himself as a gangster who hires Jack to take pictures of a diplomat having liaisons with a boy prostitute. This lengthy sequence, done in near silence, without music, reminds us of Bogdanovich’s great skill as a director. As in Targets, he shows his superb, underused talent in creating suspense out of so little means or manipulation.
Saint Jack is a comeback picture that is worthy of Bogdanovich’s talents, and Roger Corman should be commended for his generosity in producing such a complex, engrossing character study. It surely stands as one of his greatest achievements.
Originally published in The Roger Corman Scrapbook.
Greg Woods
Greg Woods has been a film enthusiast since his teens, and began his writing "career" at the same time- prolific in capsule reviews of everything he had watched, first on index cards, then those hardcover dollar store black journals, then an old Mac IIsi. He founded The Eclectic Screening Room in 2001, as a portal to share his film love with the world, and find some like-minded enthusiasts along the way. In addition to having worked in the film industry for over two decades, he has been a co-programmer of films at Trash Palace, and a programmer/co-founder of the Toronto Film Noir Syndicate. He has also written for Broken Pencil, CU-Confidential, Micro-Film, and is currently working on his first novel. His secret desire is for someone to interview him for a podcast or a DVD extra.