It is arguable that Peter Bogdanovich's two best films are his two least known. Bogdanovich began filmmaking as assistant to Roger Corman, and went on to produce his first, Corman-financed feature, Targets, in 1968 (see March 23). In 1979, he returned to the “Corman school” to make Saint Jack for New World Pictures. If, somewhere in between, he soured, with Saint Jack Bogdanovich picks up the innovative energy, as well as the contradictions, of the Corman production.
Saint Jack is a rueful, ironic play with notions of good and evil, set in Singapore where Jack Flowers (Ben Gazzara) earns his living as a freelance pimp. Jack has dreams of building a house of his own, but certain interests oppose him, and he is forced to resort to various related sidelines to make ends meet. The narrative is appropriately episodic, but in each part appears an English accountant (Denholm Elliott) with whom Jack has a close, intense relationship (making Gazzara's portrayal of Jack the more complex).
Noel Carroll writes, “Saint Jack's composition is intelligent throughout; Robby Müller's cinematography is brilliant (as usual).... Bogdanovich has a deft sense of detail...using visual incongruities to underscore the contradictions in this Asiatic emporium of late capitalism.... Yet, for all its virtues, Saint Jack is...a...version of the typical macho hero of...Hollywood.... Brash, full of wisecracks, resourceful, friendly and humane toward the wretched of the earth, scornful of hypocrisy...an emblem of the fantasy that to be a man is ‘to know.'” (in Soho Weekly News) (JB)