Saint Jack (film)
Saint Jack is a 1979 crime comedy film directed by Peter Bogdanovich based on the 1973 novel Saint Jack. Ben Gazzara stars as Flowers in the film. The film also features Denholm Elliott and George Lazenby.
| Saint Jack | |
|---|---|
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| Directed by | Peter Bogdanovich |
| Produced by | Roger Corman |
| Screenplay by | Peter Bogdanovich Howard Sackler Paul Theroux |
| Based on | Saint Jack by Paul Theroux |
| Starring | Ben Gazzara Denholm Elliott George Lazenby |
| Cinematography | Robby Müller |
| Edited by | William C. Carruth |
| Distributed by | New World Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 112 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | $2 million[1] |
Cast
- Ben Gazzara as Jack Flowers
- Denholm Elliott as William Leigh
- James Villiers as Frogget
- Joss Ackland as Yardley
- Rodney Bewes as Smale
- Mark Kingston as Mr. Yates
- Lisa Lu as Mrs. Yates
- Monika Subramaniam as Monika
- Judy Lim as Judy
- George Lazenby as Senator
- Peter Bogdanovich as Eddie Schuman
- Joseph Noël as Gopi
Film adaptation rights
Cybill Shepherd sued Playboy magazine after they published photos of her from The Last Picture Show. As part of the settlement, she got the rights to the novel Saint Jack, which she had wanted to make into a film ever since Orson Welles gave her a copy.[2]
Production
Saint Jack was shot entirely on location in various places in Singapore in May and June 1978. Places featured in the film include the former Empress Place hawker centre (now demolished) and Bugis Street. The local authorities knew about the book, hence the foreign production crew did not tell them that they were adapting it, fearing that they would not be permitted to shoot the film. Instead, they created a fake synopsis for a film called Jack of Hearts, (what the director called "a cross between Love Is a Many Splendored Thing and Pal Joey"[1]) and most of the Singaporeans involved in the production believed this was what they were making.
Release
The film was banned in Singapore and Malaysia on January 17, 1980. Singapore banned it "largely due to concerns that there would be excessive edits required to the scenes of nudity and some coarse language before it could be shown to a general audience", and lifted the ban only in March 2006.[3] It is now an M18-rated film.
Saint Jack was re-released in North America on DVD in 2001.
In an interview with The New York Times on 15 March 2006, Bogdanovich said "Saint Jack and They All Laughed were two of my best films but never received the kind of distribution they should have."[4]
Reception
Roger Ebert gave the film a four-star review. In praise of Gazzara's performance, he writes "sometimes a character in a movie inhabits his world so freely, so easily, that he creates it for us as well. Ben Gazzara does that in Saint Jack." He goes on to say "The film is by Peter Bogdanovitch and what a revelation it is, coming after three expensive flops. But here everything is right again. Everything."[5]
References
- Lee, Grant. (Aug 10, 1979). "Bogdanovich's Picture Show". Los Angeles Times. p. e16.
- Mann, Roderick. (May 21, 1978). "The Upside-Down Views of Cybill Shepherd". Los Angeles Times. p. n37.
- Suk-Wai, Cheong (29 March 2006). "Saint Elsewhere". The Straits Times. p. 5.
- Ibid. (A search of The New York Times' archive on 29 March 2006 failed to find the text of the interview.)
- Ebert, Roger (2007). Roger Ebert's Four Star Reviews--1967-2007. Kansas City: Andrew McMeel Publishing. p. 666. ISBN 978-0-7407-7179-8. Retrieved 21 September 2017.