Peter Bogdanovich goes far out of his comfort
zone with this adaption of the Paul Theroux novel of the same name. Much
grittier and darker than his previous films. It is set in a Singapore that
is going through a transition from colonial rule to modernity. Some elements
of its past still linger in the British ex-pats who frequent the bars and
the brothels and of course the famous Raffles Hotel where the Singapore Sling
is still the required drink. It is 1972 - time stamped by a headline saying
"Nixon is Going to China" though the mood is more the 1960s of The World
of Suzy Wong. The film opens with a shot of some yachts tied up at the dock
and a tall building in the background and you might think this is New York
but the camera continues to pan around to dozens of sampans tied up and then
cuts to a narrow road with its small shops, restaurant tables set outside,
peddlers stopping by, girls standing in the shadows, beer being drunk, rickshaws
taking passengers. Bogdanovich stays far away from modern Singapore in this
film and trawls through the wreckage of the underclass and the underworld.
Of heat and sweat and sex and squalor.
This is not particularly an image that the government of Singapore wanted
to project at the time. The book had been banned. But Bogdanovich wanted
to make it there and so created an elaborate ruse to make people think he
was making another film. One that he created a script for. He shot it in
little pieces so that no one knew what he was up to till the film was edited
together and shown. Singapore banned it till 2008. Much of where the location
shooting took place has been torn down now and so this is a memory as much
as anything else - of Old Asia before all the cities were turned into glass
towers and glossy air-conditioned malls. Walk down Orchard Road today or
around the Lion City and there is not a whisper of this old Singapore. Singapore
has turned into a deadly dull place to live or visit. How much it was really
like this in 1972 I can't say as I never got there till the late 80's but
this was when Theroux was working there and what he wrote about. The Exotic
Orient that fascinated so many from the West. Bogdanovich had wanted Orson
Welles to direct this - but Cybill Shepard who had the rights to the book
and the studio didn't. Welles was past his best but one could see him doing
it like A Touch of Evil and it might have been great.
The film follows the life of Jack (Ben Gazzara), an American who jumped ship
and was washed ashore with all the other flotsam and jetsam. But he has made
a life of sorts being the American who can get things done, who knows everybody
in this underbelly and can get you want you want. In particular, he can get
you girls - a small time pimp who acts more as a go-between than the ugly
pimps of most films. He spends his days frequenting the water holes where
all the ex-pats hang out ordering a little bit of home in the bottle. Customers
come up to him and say my friend back home told me to look up Jack if I needed
a girl. Sure. Let's go shopping.
The thing though is that Jack is a swell guy - helps everyone in need - gives
the watch he is wearing to a girl who lost her boyfriend as a gift for him.
But the competition is watching him - Chinese triads - and everyone
warns him to keep to being a bit player. But he wants his own place - a fancy
bordello full of girls and he gets that and trouble. It is an interesting
film with very few dramatic pauses - it just follows Jack around over a few
years - time measured by the yearly visits of a friend from Hong Kong played
wonderfully well by Denholm Elliot. His interactions with the locals, ex-pats,
prostitutes and soldiers on leave from Viet Nam are the bulk of the film.
In his Hawaiian shirts he is always cool, unworried and talks about going
home but this Singapore is in his blood. There is no going home. He would
hate what Singapore is today.
In the film also is Bogdanovich playing an official of some sort who has
Jack set up an R&R paradise for the soldiers, George Lazenby as an American
Senator who likes boys and in a very small part (the older Chinese lady with
her British husband at Raffles) is Lisa Lu who has had one of the more fascinating
careers about. An Opera performer in Mainland China till she left for America
in the late 1950s and then over decades was in American films as well as
some classic Hong Kong films. She was also one of the producers (as was Corman
and Hugh Hefner- likely explaining the nudity) of this film, which probably
did not turn out well because Bogdanovich had another box office disappointment
on his hands. His next film is They All Laughed which Gazzara starred in
as much the same type of character as he breezes around knowing everyone
- but not as a pimp but as a detective.
