Σαιντ Τζακ

Mark Asch4.5

Ben Gazzara in this movie is the kind of man I wish I was: sex-positive, closet full of Hawaiian shirts, incredibly good at saying Hi to people

Filipe Furtado4.5

On feeling rootless in a dirty business. It is about an American pimp in Singapore, but really PB aimless Hollywood career. It is very much the start of Bogdanovich's second act, very self-aware but not quite in the ways expected. Saint Jack is sometimes called Cassavetes-lite and while there are similarities (Gazarra, lots of guys boozing together, a hangout atmosphere), the alienation expressed is very different from him. There's actually much more of a certain conspiratorial displacement from some of Welles non American films, but without the more oppressive undercurrents. Gazarra is great and his scenes with Denholm Eliott as a brit expat who searches him for companionship are some of the best either man or Bogdanovich have been involved. Most of the film exists in pure seedy atmosphere and this pull between belonging and unbelonging and Saint Jack manages the hard feat of sustaining it while remaining warm and welcoming.

pd1874.5

"karl marx, that sly old racist, skipping away with his teeth together and his eyebrows up, trying to make believe its nothing but cheap labor and overseas markets.... oh, no. colonies are the outhouses of the european soul, where a fellow can let his pants down and relax, enjoy the smell of his own shit. where he can fall on his slender prey roaring as loud as he feels like, and guzzle her blood with open joy. (...) christian europe was always death, karl, death and repression. out and down in the colonies, life can be indulged, life and sensuality in all its forms, with no harm done to the metropolis, nothing to soil those cathedrals, white marble statues, noble thoughts.... no word ever gets back."