‘Saint Jack’ from 1979 closes the directorial decade of the ’70s of Peter Bogdanovich which had started with the excellent ‘The Last Picture Show ‘. Even if it fails, in my opinion, to reach the stylistic perfection of his earlier movie, ‘Saint Jack’ is an interesting and important film for Bogdanovich‘s filmography. The stories of the two films take place in different eras and on different continents, but there is a strong common theme between the two – nostalgia for worlds gone or about to disappear. ‘Saint Jack’ manages to capture a phase of transition of the island state of Singapore from the port at the crossroads and pleasure district of sailors, soldiers and former settlers to the modern, industrialized, orderly, perhaps too orderly metropolis that we know today. The modernization of the Far East is accompanied by the abandonment of the area by the last representatives of the colonial powers who had controlled this part of the world for almost two centuries. The making of the film was itself an interesting story. The initial plan was that it would be directed by Orson Welles, this was one of the few projects to return to film directing by Welles that never materialized. It is an American film produced by major studios, but shot entirely on location in Singapore. It is also the only film that captures the decade of transition of the island state, although the film has been banned in Singapore for over two decades. This production, maybe, someday, will be the subject of another film.
‘Saint Jack’ is based on a novel by Paul Theroux, who was also a co-writer of the script. His main hero, Jack (the wonderful Ben Gazzara) is what the French call ‘a meteque’ – a stranger any place in the world. The first-generation American (his parents had immigrated from Italy) enlisted in the army, fought in Korea and probably was spelled by the Asian mirage so he decided to remain in Singapore. Here he tries to build a business by creating a brothel where local girls and boys work while a clientele which is a combination of tourists, expatriates, mostly British, and wealthy locals. Local competition is fierce and violent, and social pressures are mounting as the new Singapore advances and replaces the old one street by street, house by house. ‘Saint Jack’ is far from being a saint, but the screenwriter and director avoid moral or political judgments, which in a film made today might have been harder to avoid. But when it comes to major decisions, Jack chooses to listen to his conscience. From this point of view, his character resembles Rick Blaine, the hero played by Humphrey Bogart in ‘Casablanca‘.
Ben Gazzara is one of those actors whose figure is familiar to us, because we have seen them in dozens of movies or series, most often in supporting roles. ‘Saint Jack’ is probably the most significant role of his career, one of the few main roles, and it can be said that the trust given by Peter Bogdanovich was perfectly justified. The calm and humor he keeps in the most tense moments, his eyes full of humanity, the eyes of a man who went through alot and saw alot in his life, his understanding and compassion for people of all kinds he comes in contact with, and especially the friendship and moral verticality that he maintains in an environment rotten by corruption from all directions, all these combined create a role difficult to forget. Among the other acting performances I would mention that of Denholm Elliott in the role of an English accountant, a kind of symbol of Great Britain that disappears from this part of the world leaving the place of an America with different ambitions, embodied by the character of the CIA agent played by Peter Bogdanovich himself. Many other actors are local and unprofessional, which gives them extra authenticity. Filming in the streets, neighborhoods and houses of Singapore pays attention to detail building up a document that captures times of transition to modernity with the collateral victims of this process, including images of bars, prostitution, the LGBT community that were rarely shown on screens in that period. ‘Saint Jack’ is one of the important films in Peter Bogdanovich‘s career, a human and historical document that deserves to be seen or reviewed.