Saint Jack”

Billed as “a Casablanca for the 1970s,” Peter Bogdanovich's Saint Jack immediately evokes the Bogart classic. Ben Gazzara plays an American expatriate living in Singapore, involved fairly lucratively and with a definite panache in the business of pimping for a stable of Asian beauties. As with Rick, the hero of Casablanca, Jack's background and how he got where he's at are initially obscure. He tells us that he's an Italo-American from Buffalo, and we later leam that he came to Singapore as a seaman, liked the place, and stayed to establish his procurer's street mini-empire. There is, to be sure, the Bogart touch. I have not seen enough of Gazzara's character acting to know if this is his stock in trade, but if it is, then Bogdanovich has selected him shrewdly for the lead role. If it is not, then surely Gazzara has made a studied effort at reproducing the smart-mouthed, straight-from-the-shoulder, tough-guy with-a-heart-of-gold character which made Bogart famous. Unlike Casablanca's major protagonist, however, there is no secret past which catches up with Saint Jack, no reappearance of an old lover whose arrival on the scene peels back the covers from a beshrouded past. All we ever know about Jack is that, for all his gregariousness, his free hand with cash, and seemingly genuine endearment to a host of Chinese acquaintances, he is a loner, a “nowhere man” who abhors commitments, especially to the women he attracts

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