A-LIVE IN THE FLESH : John Cassavetes’ ‘The Killing of a Chinese Bookie’ (1976) [7/10]

Published on: November 28th, 2005

Los Angeles, the mid-seventies. Originally from New York, Cosmo Vitelli (Ben Gazzara) is the proud owner of the Crazy Horse West, a nightclub featuring dancing semi-naked girls "A-Live in the Flesh" as the garish sign outside the premises puts it. Cosmo, seeing himself as a high-roller, spends an evening gambling at a club in Santa Monica – and ends up $23,000 down. A bad move: the club is owned by gangsters who coerce Cosmo into carrying out a 'hit' for them in lieu of payment. Cosmo is told that his target is merely a "Chinese bookie". This is only partly true…

Cassavetes trimmed The Killing of a Chinese Bookie by 26 minutes after its initial release – and box-office failure – in 1976; this review is based on the longer version, and there's clearly plenty of fat that could and should have been excised: several of the nightclub burlesque performances outstay their welcome pretty fast, and during one in particular (a 'Gay Paree' number) the picture's momentum grinds to a complete halt. If nothing else, these Crazy Horse West sequences do showcase the astonishing feature-film acting debut for 45-year-old veteran screenwriter Meade Roberts as the chubby, top-hatted, thoroughly jaded MC known as 'Mr Sophistication' (he's amusingly mis-introduced as 'Mr Fascination' at one point) – as compelling in his own way as the very different Joel Grey in Cabaret.

It's around Gazzara, however, that the film really revolves: as a portrait of a once-cocksure man in crisis and (terminal?) decline, it's a Stateside precursor of The Long Good Friday – from certain angles the balding, flat-faced, round-headed Gazzara even looks like Bob Hoskins' strutting bantam Harold Shand. Performances are, in fact, strong across the board – including a truly wild turn from Timothy Carey as the most menacing of the hoods. Otherwise Cassavetes aims for and achieves his usual documentary-style rough-edged realism – the level of verisimilitude is consistently impressive, and we believe that these people really do inhabit this neon-orange smudge of an anything-goes night-town city.

But despite Cassavetes the director having expended so much attention on the details, performances and atmosphere, Cassavetes the writer doesn't seem sure of how to make them work to his story's advantage. Suffering a serious injury following his blood-spattered visit to the 'Chinaman's' house, Vitelli starts to lose his grip on reality – and the movie goes downhill with him, its swaggering air of self-indulgence fizzling out into a lather of pseudo-philosophical dialogue.

Gazzara apparently reckons that Vitelli at least partially represented Cassavetes' view of himself as show-must-go-on impresario, battling against the odds to bring entertainment and diversion to the public – if so, it's not the most flattering of self-portraits, as the routines Vitelli devises are pretty lousy affairs and his on-stage patter alienates rather than amuses his customers, who are vocally impatient to see his girls in action. Audiences watching the two-hour-plus version of Bookie are likely to feel a similar sense of get-on-with-it exasperation: the outlines of a truly great movie are clearly discernible here, one which presumably came a step or two closer to fruition following Cassavetes' wise rethink.

Neil Young
27th November, 2005

THE KILLING OF A CHINESE BOOKIE : [7/10] : USA 1976 : John CASSAVETES : 129 mins* (timed)
seen at Side Cinema, Newcastle-upon-Tyne (UK), 27th November 2005 – DVD projection

* Two 35mm versions of this film have been in circulation, the '1976 cut' running 135 minutes and the '1978 cut' running 109 minutes. The version shown at this screening was presumably the 1976 cut.