Login
As a massive devotee and fan of David Bowie, I’ve been known to refer to him as God on more than one occasion, I’ve been strangely looking forward to viewing this. I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect, but I knew it was going to be a mess. Perhaps these low expectations lead to my odd enjoyment of the film, but I’m not blind to its numerous faults and weaknesses.
Just a Gigolo’s biggest problem is a clumsiness of tonal coherence and narrative purpose. “The Graduate-lite in the Weimar Republic” is as close to a description as I can get to it. Is this trying to be arch and ironic? If so, only a few of the players get that tone and attune their performances accordingly. Is this trying to be a poignant and tragic look at the rise of Nazism? If so, someone please tell the people trying to play things for laughs that they’re undermining it. But watching the two styles clash and consume each other almost becomes an entertainment in its own right.
There’s several films fighting for prominence in Just a Gigolo, beginning with the Paths of Glory aping opening, filmed in sepia and taking place entirely in the trenches. Once we return to Berlin, the film pulls a Wizard of Oz and transforms into full color. Each passing year is presented by following a pair of elder gossiping ladies in completely ludicrous hats, seemingly oblivious to the social strife and ills surrounding them. There’s the rise of Nazism, of course, explorations into the subterranean sexual and romantic lives of Berliners that Nazism would seek to destroy.
A queer aesthetic runs throughout much of Bowie’s work, so no shock that Just a Gigolo both openly expresses it and flirts with it obliquely. After all, this is a film that managed to get Marlene Dietrich to play the madam of the dancehall’s gigolos and perform the title song late in the film, a moment so poignant and weighted because it is Dietrich delivering such loaded lines with exquisite melancholy. Then there’s Sydne Rome’s divinely decadent Cilly, a clear variation of Cabaret’s Sally Bowles. She performs in a music hall that’s emceed by a drag queen and frequented by Berlin’s queer community. The more oblique queer element resides not only in Bowie’s eventual transition into a gigolo, where the film flirts with his male clients, but the Nazis obsession with him as a good looking symbol for the cause, eager to transform his lithe, willowy looks into a leather-clad submissive.
Sydne Rome’s performance is the obvious winner, as she most accurately vibes with the alternating currents of the film’s tones. Her musical number flirts with Cabaret’s editing techniques, and Just a Gigolo fires away on all cylinders for a few brief moments. I wonder what Bob Fosse could have finessed from this material, or, if not him, if Nicolas Roeg’s deconstructed, dream-like collage style, or any number of better directors.
There’s several kernels of strong ideas and storytelling choices, but David Hemmings, director and actor of this, doesn’t know what to do with them. He manages to not only get Dietrich for a glorified cameo, but Maria Schell, Curd Jürgens, and Kim Novak are in this in roles that are given weight and dimension by their screen personas. Each of them brings their A-game to their limited scenes, but it’s frustrating to watch, say, Schell play the mother but never get a memorable moment to really dig in to joy of being reunited with her son or despair at his death. Or for Novak to bring her sad, intelligent sex appeal to an older woman looking for comfort, and only manage to really express this in one brief close-up of her still face, eyes filled with sadness, and mouth slightly twisted in frustration.
I’m not going to proclaim that Just a Gigolo is somehow underappreciated and deserves another look, because it is entertaining in its awfulness while still being awful. It is a case in which a movie is unique in its badness, not merely one that can be written off as unmemorable and terrible, think of any given year’s major summer blockbusters, which are so ephemeral they may require a new word to describe them. Bowie once described this as all of his Elvis Presley films rolled into one, and that wackiness pervades the entirety of the film. It’s not good in any traditional way, but it’s fascinating to watch. I’m also deeply curious about that alleged three-hour German version, I wonder if a more coherent movie can be found in that edit.
