Gigolo

Believe it or not, this was David Bowie's first acting role in a motion picture, despite the fact that this film was released a year after THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH. A large portion of this film was destroyed in a fire, so it took director Hemmings nearly three years to piece together a motion picture out of what remained. With that in mind, this is a remarkable film, and one can't help but wonder what the finished product might have been like had it not been for the fire. For what is most intriguing about this film is the use of real footage of the Weimar Republic Germany in all its glorious decadence and decay. Whether this footage was used to buffer the missing footage or planned from the beginning, I guess we'll never know, but it brings an invaluable air of absurdity and black humour to what is already a pretty outrageous film. All the performances are great, especially Bowie, who really is one of the most underrated film talents out there. And the music score, which features some of the glorious songs from that era, as well as the irresistible theme song from Miss Dietrich, is fantastic! If anyone knows where I can get a copy of the soundtrack, let me know!

David Bowie stars this unusual melodrama set after World War I, a war hero , Army Lietenant, goes back to Berlin to find that there's no place for him, as he has no skills other than what he learned in the army, and can only find menial, low-paying jobs. He decides to become a gigolo to lonely wealthy women. As he spends most of his time working for the sexiest of ladies.

It is a mediocre film from Columbia Pictures with splendid cast that although in the technical sections: photography, music, costumes, coloring are quite good, it suffers from slowness, interference and confusion. It displays a lot of most expensive sets ever made in Germany to date, restoring some footage originally deleted by the producer Rolf Thiele, who radically reduced its 147 minutes running time after preliminary screenings. These alterations may well have helped, but no amount of tinkering could turn it into the comedy-drama that it was clearly intented to be. Its main problem is its tone, dealing with the story of a young Prussian returning to a turbulent Berlin after WWWI and finding himself torn between a number of successive lovers, homosexual Nazis, a group of gigolos and a flotilla of rich widows, but it never finds its nivel, swinging wildly between coarse knockabout farce and aspirations to tragic dignity. At the beginning there is a good recreation of the trenches during the First World War, and later there are some brief atmospheric descriptions of the German social situation during the failed Weimar Republic with the rise of the 'brownshirts' commanded by Ernst Rohm. But the film gets lost in different twists and turns in which our protagonist interacts with various women such as the dancer and singer Sydne Rome who's actually the attractive co-starring proving like never before that she is a good actress, singer and dancer; furthermore, the still charming widow Kim Novak, the gigolos-madam Marlene Dietrich, his mother played by Maria Schell who cleans the Berlin baths, among others. This film was about Berlin, shot in Berlin and financed partly by Berlin. However, none of the principal cast were from Berlin except for Marlene Dietrich in her last on-screen appearance, who was a native Berliner in self-imposed exile, in fact she shot in Paris but montage makes her seem to be in Berlin with David Bowie. Bowie's vacant acting reflects these uncertainties precisely and the cluster of star names around him are reduced to delivering awkward party pieces, these notorious players include as follows : Kim Novak, Maria Schell, David Hemmings, Maria Schell, Curd Jürgens and brief appearances from slighly known German actors, such as: Erika Pluhar, Hilde Weissner, Werner Pochath, Gunter Meisner, Reinhard Kolldehoff and 'with pride' Marlene Dietrich.

The motion picture was regularly and slowly directed by David Hemmings. This prestigious actor and directed -dead at 62- played some famous films: Alfred the Great, Blow-up, Profondo rosso, Barbarella, Camelot. And also directed some pictures with limited success. Hemmings made two Australian theatrical feature films in the early 1980s , the first was The survivor (1981) and followed by Race for the Yankee Zephyr (1981). This was last cinema movie directed by David Hemmings for around eleven years until 1992's Dark Horse (1992). Both films were made with producer Antony I. Ginnane and both movies featured an airplane as a central story element and David Hemmings replaced Richard Franklin as director. Hemmings' only other theatrical feature after that movie was 1996's Lone Justice 3 (1996). In between these pictures Hemmings did direct in television various episodes of popular TV series, such as: A Team (1983), Airwolf (1984), Magnum P. I. (1980) and Quantum Leap (1989). Rating: Average, 4.5/10. Only for David Bowie fans.

This is one of the most unusual films I have ever seen. It's an offbeat, sensitively filmed look at Weimar Germany in a sort of parallel-universe version. "Cabaret" it is not! If you ever get a chance to see it, I don't want to spoil the ending for you . . . but when you see it, you'll say to yourself, "Of course! Why didn't I foresee that coming?!?" David Bowie plays a sort of innocent ne'er-do-well discharged from the German army after World War I and drifting through existence; he can't find anything to do with himself except hire himself out as a "gigolo" for rich, proto-Eurotrash war widows in ballrooms where they "dance to forget". Bowie's father is a once-domineering tyrant who has been silenced by a stroke. Bowie tries to break the news to him that he has descended so far as to play the gigolo, a betrayal of his father's macho ideals, but Dad only sits in stony silence -- a disturbing scene. Bowie plays a poor lost soul. As Western civilization decays all around him, a sinister character stalks him and tries to gain control over him; this bloke is vaguely homosexual (only suggested), and one of his lines is a real groaner of a double-entendre: "We will have you in the end!" Marlene Dietrich is the center of romantic gravity in this story; she sadly, sweetly tells Bowie the raison d'etre of forlorn women dancing with gigolos in the ballrooms -- the only way to assuage loss and stave off despair. Then she performs the song "Just a Gigolo", bringing out all the heartbreak from its depths. The end of the film is dark and truly chilling. Go see it if you can!

Kim Novak's former husband Richard Johnson- whom Kim co starred in Moll Flanders- personally persuaded the great star to attach herself to Just A Gigolo which starred David Bowie and Marlene Dietrich and Maria Schell.

I recently saw this movie and I found Novak entrancing in the film, sexy, and gorgeous. Kim Novak in an interview in 2010 said Kim Novak wondered why She made this film. I can understand that, it got little US distribution even with a great cast. But film fans of German films and especially of Kim Novak -who looks gorgeous, alluring, and is very stylish as always in this film is worth a look.

There are also clips of this film on Youtube.com and I recommend all try and catch them as well.

PS Kim Novak's last films Just A Gigolo, The Children and Liebestraum all received scant distribution only The Mirror Crack'd got the distribution it deserved

David Barra Los Angeles

I saw this movie when I was 19 at a theater in Seattle. I actually stole the movie poster out of the wall display as they did not have it locked down and it was too good of an opportunity for the more adventurous girl I was back then. I no longer have the poster( I tossed it after a while as it was damaged from too many moves). I still have 2 soundtracks from it that I bought at the time(thank God). One I've left sealed because, yeah I'm one of those types. Anyways, I loved the movie. It had a great cast(I was a HUGE Bowie fan, still am). I've always liked the director David Hemmings. Such a hottie when he was a young actor. Charming soundtrack by the way. It's definitely worth seeing. Storyline roughly is down on his luck soldier who becomes a gigolo but is a little too sensitive for his new career and the politics of the time. Wish I had a copy of the movie....