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Osborne (The Entertainer) for the métier, Genet (The Balcony) for the outlook. Crazy Horse West on Sunset Strip, "two speeds, slow and stop." A rancid dive but a kingdom for the impresario (Ben Gazzara), who weathers his foes with raffish inner serenity. "I'm the owner of this joint. I choose the numbers, I direct them, I arrange them. You have any complaints, you just come to me and I'll throw you right out on your ass." Shifting fortunes are the nature of the game, the Mafia collects his debt by making him a reluctant executioner. "Now, I shall mesmerize you, all of you..." The gambler-artist in the throes, cf. Bacon's 42nd Street, the ultimate John Cassavetes self-portrait and the extended anticlimax macho posturing deserves. Suave in his own mind, the protagonist takes his "entourage of biscuits" on limousine rides and makes sure to drop French words when auditioning a waitress. Action is a requirement of the genre, gangsters demand it like studio suits so the pimp-auteur goes through the underworld motions but his heart belongs to the slapdash spectacle of his shabby fantasy realm. "Mr. Sophistication and his De-Lovelies," Meade Roberts like Humpty Dumpty with painted Dalí mustache wringing every last drop of contempt out of "I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby." Scuffle with Timothy Carey in an alley, "now we have a relationship," Seymour Cassel in daguerreotype silhouette in the backseat. "No traffic violations," followed by a vortex of swerving headlights and Gazzara's Bob Newhart bit in the phone booth. Extraordinary nocturnal textures and infernal reds to complement a most attentive soundscape (clinking glasses, distant sirens, kung-fu movies heard but not seen). The bullet hole behind the tuxedo, "style, not class." Bogdanovich and Ferrara offer close studies in Saint Jack and Go Go Tales. With Azizi Johari, Virginia Carrington, Alice Friedland, Donna Gordon, Kathalina Veniero, Morgan Woodward, Robert Phillips, John Kullers, Al Ruban, and Val Avery.
--- Fernando F. Croce |