Left Field Cinema

When we consider the great American films of the 1970’s and indeed the great American film makers who created their best works in that decade, the same names and the same films often appear: Martin Scorsese, Taxi Driver, William Friedkin, The French Connection, Francis Ford Coppola, The Godfather, Terrance Malick, Badlands, Sidney Lumet, Dog Day Afternoon. But less often does the name John Cassavetes get mentioned and when it is then it is usually in conjunction with his 1974 masterpiece Woman Under the Influence rather than his 1976 follow-up, the lesser-known film, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie. There are several reasons for this but first and foremost is accessibility, although all the films I’ve mentioned by the other great directors I’ve mentioned share the same genre as The Killing of a Chinese Bookie most of said films are plot and character driven accessible feature films which have open doors through which audiences can enter. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (especially the first cut of the film) is deliberately murky and could almost be viewed as deliberately off-putting. Taxi Driver, The Godfather, Badlands and Dog Day Afternoon all critique some facet of the American Dream, but none of them tackle the subject with such restraint as The Killing of a Chinese Bookie.

The plot of the film is deceptively sparse and it is matched by a pace which is deceptively slow. In more impatient hands the entire film could have been reduced to a fifteen minute short with barely any of the plot missing. Cosmo Vitelli is a strip club owner as played miraculously by Ben Gazzara, Cosmo has a gambling problem and no sooner is he paying one debt off he creating another debt with some morally unscrupulous gangsters. With $23,000 to pay off and most of his own money tied up in his club, Cosmo is offered a chance to wipe the debt if he kills the titular Chinese bookie for the gangsters. That is basically the long and short of the main plot line, but there are two subplots which strengthen the films spine, one centred around Cosmo’s tempestuous relationship with one of his erotic dancers as their relationship is put under strain, the other is centred around the morale of Cosmo’s performers who are becoming increasingly dissatisfied working for him. Both these subplots provide additional pressures which Cosmo must bear. Unsurprisingly the story is based on an idea originally conceived by Martin Scorsese and John Cassavetes, although quite what Scorsese would have done with the film is a matter for speculation but I imagine the film would not be too dissimilar to Cassavetes’ film – although perhaps with a tad more varnish. Cassavetes is known for his works of intense naturalism and improvisation (although most of his films were made without the aid of improvisation) his films are remembered for being social character pieces and are for the most part genre-less. The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is an exception to this rule, which demonstrate that Cassavetes can work within genre if needed, along with his later film Gloria produced in 1980 (which strongly influenced the likes of Luc Besson’s Leon in 1994 and more recently Erick Zonca’s film Julia in 2008). But Gloria and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie remain Cassavetes films with or without the genre constraints, both of which may be crime films but neither of which look or sound like any crime films which came before them. Most of what makes them unique is Cassavetes own particular brand of naturalism and cinematic energy which seems to defy so many other American film makers. The camera is constantly hand held, although here he’s working on 35mm cameras, the image is still immediate and claustrophobic, keeping the frame tight on his subjects. The merciless close-up is Cassavetes stock in trade and exposes the souls of his characters in a way that the wide angle can never achieve. At points appearing more like documentary footage than a fiction film – you can hear the camera whirring in the background, there is little in the way of dubbed dialogue, the words you hear are the words that were spoken on that day rather than ADR months later. The scenes are very long, as conversations between real people usually are, not as extended as the scenes in his 1969 film Faces for example which at two hours in length only seemed to have about six scenes in the films entirety. This naturalism helps to conjure a feeling of dread that is rare in cinema; the audience is assisted in their buying of the conceit that what you’re witnessing is actual reality rather than a work of fiction. This comes not only from the visual style and the low quality audio but also from the performances, how much is scripted and how much was improvised is unclear, but given the perceived spontaneity of some character responses it would be a likely assumption that a high percentage of the films dialogue is improvised.

Some of that dread also comes from the films locations and characters, this is the blisteringly hot Nevada desert, the Las Vegas setting by day exposes and idyllic city with beautiful weather and beautiful women, but by night that idyll evaporates. Night falls, the light is gone, the beautiful weather turns to darkness and the beautiful women turn into strippers willing to take money to bare themselves to strangers. At all times Cosmo is out numbered and out manoeuvred, his tragic flaw is his gambling and although he’s built his own business and is successful within the capitalist system – that business, that American Dream can be taken away from him with the pull of a trigger or the roll of a dice. Cosmo is always on his own, he’s a big fish in his own pond, the boss, the man who owns the licence – but outside of the club he’s one man being bullied by four or five men who are bigger, stronger and remorselessly violent. Cosmo is between a rock and a hard place, if he doesn’t kill the bookie he’ll probably lose the club he loves so dearly, if he does attempt to kill the bookie he might go to jail or worse be killed in the process. What makes Cosmo’s dilemma an even deeper tragedy is that his club is not very good – a business he’s willing to kill for and although clearly making him enough money to get by is not making enough money to last forever. The shows the club run are trying to combine a striping with theatre (in particular farce) as the show’s host Mr. Sophistication (as portrayed by the delightful Meade Roberts) sings and narrates as the young attractive girls swan around his overweight figure and balding head. The girls flash their breasts momentarily with no consideration for audience arousal, but even so they get all the cheers as Mr. Sophistication continues in the vain hope that his efforts as host will be appreciated by the audience whose primary concern is titillation above everything else. Mr. Sophistication’s misplaced ego and theatrical concerns are as absurd as Cosmo’s willingness to sacrifice everything for the very platform he performs from. Mr. Sophistication tries to be taken seriously, but just as the audience is being lulled to sleep one of the girls will light his hair on fire or show some flesh and the basest instincts of the crowd kick in, they are performing for the lowest common denominator, but no one seems to have realised, Mr. Sophistication has deluded himself so much that he actually believes people come to the show to see him perform. His melting make-up is brutally exposed by the club lights.

Light is a key component of The Killing of a Chinese Bookie, throughout the film light seems to attack subjects rather than illuminate them, the harsh light of day blasting through to our eyes from behind a edge of a building or Cosmo’s face, or the flickering lamp in Cosmo’s girlfriend’s house which would act as more of a headache cause than a lamp. The spotlights in the club are also crucial; they are as piercing, fleeting and vain as the American Dream. The red and blue lights move from person to person and no sooner has a person been illuminated – they are then plunged into darkness with the flick of a switch. More than any other Cassavetes film - the lighting is crucial.

The Killing of a Chinese Bookie is given extra weight from the central performance of Ben Gazzara as Cosmo. Gazzara makes Cosmo real, there are no cheesy ham-fisted theatrics in this film, no one looks cool in acts of violence or intimidation – and especially not Cosmo. Cosmo is proud, but he’s weak, he has a private audition with a local waitress which ends with his girlfriend violently interrupting them, Cosmo takes charge of the situation but only in a very passive sense. Another sequence shows Cosmo dancing and drinking by himself, a big grin on his face apparently unaware of how lonely he appears. Gazzara endows Cosmo with a believable vulnerability, despite his military background, despite the fact he’s killed men in the Korean War, despite being the owner of a night club – Cosmo is still vulnerable to those who would seek his demise or covet what he owns. Cosmo’s ability to commit acts of murder is discovered at the penumbra of his soul, a character point which only adds to his believability. Cosmo’s attitude towards his employees for example, his attitude to the performances is one of tender care and appreciation rather than ruthless business, in one scene we witness Cosmo stop on his way to do the evil deed he goes to a telephone box and calls up someone at his club to make sure things are going smoothly. On a night out at a casino Cosmo takes some of the girls with him in a limo, he brings each of them a flower to wear before they carry on. But this tenderness is offset by a can-do attitude and a mercenary approach when the time is right. Two stand-out scenes are the titular attempted Killing of the Chinese Bookie, where we follow Cosmo into the property of his target, first buying plain hamburgers to help subdue the dogs (much to the confusion of his waitress when he asks for all the burgers in a paper bag with no wrapping). The sequence is music less once Cosmo gains entrance to the main building, Cosmo shows another side to his character but one that is believable given Gazzara’s skill as an actor, Cosmo silently stalks his prey and takes his time as the victim plays in a private pool with his lover. The sequence may have been shot in 1976 but it hasn’t aged a day - it appears positively modern.

The second scene shows Cosmo being stalked by another assassin, but instead of cutting between Cosmo and his potential assailant, we instead stay with the assassin as he searches around an abandoned, darken building for Cosmo. An extended and tense sequence sees the roles reversed as the killer begins to panic as he can’t find Cosmo anywhere, we eventually find Cosmo quietly standing in a darkened corner calmly biding his time whilst the assassin makes all the noise and fires randomly into the darkness.

There are two cuts of the film, the first released in 1976 is 135 minutes long, two years later and Cassavetes re-cut the film and re-released it in 1978 at just 109 minutes, losing around twenty-five minutes from the film. As unusual as it is in this day and age for a director to actually cut content out of the film, the re-cut is doubly unusual as Cassavetes also re-instated several scenes that were cut from the 1976 version including a pivotal scene which provides Cosmos with a military background from the Korean War, explaining his willingness to embark on a possible suicide mission to execute his Asian target. Cassavetes also re-ordered some of the films earlier scenes to make the context and character establishment clearer. The 1978 cut makes more sense, and relies less on implied knowledge, the longer 1976 cut is murkier, taking much longer to get going with an extended and moody first act which although directionless - set the tone for the film as a whole. Of the two cuts I’m not sure which I prefer, as both have merits, however I will say that some of the best moments from the 1976 cut of the film were removed from the 1978 cut including the gangster called Flo played by Timophy Carey pulling strange faces as he drives away from a meeting place and Cosmo’s playful confrontation with one of his dancers brothers. Which ever cut you decide to watch there is merit in each as this is truly a forgotten gem of 1970’s American cinema, an exercise in restrained simplicity and a masterpiece of the crime genre which can be held up along side the likes of Dog Day Afternoon, The French Connection and Badlands for it’s unique approach to the genre it embodies.

M.Dawson