As someone who had learned about Cassavetes in film studies and thought his films looked interesting, but never got round to seeing one of his films it was with great anticipation that I watched The Killing Of a Chinese Bookie (the 1976 longer original edit, the shorter 1978 edit is also included), the fifth and final title in the BFI’s John Cassavetes Collection. Immediately I was struck by how fresh and ahead of its time it was, and just how influential Cassavetes is to independent cinema. His cinéma vérité style, naturalistic use of sound, strong lighting schemes, unusual camera framing and use of incidental, improvised and overlapping dialogue (Tarantino must’ve definitely been taking notes), makes a Cassevetes film feel immediate, intimate and unique, making you feel like you’re spying on the characters.
The Killing concerns small-time strip-club owner Cosmo Vitelli (Ben Gazzara) as he tries to stay afloat and keep his club open by paying off his loans. Along the way however he falls into trouble with underworld racketeers who lure him into their casino, where he amasses a huge debt which he cannot pay, and gets manipulated by them to accept a dangerous job of killing a powerful rival gang member.
It is Ben Gazzarra’s compelling performance that really makes this film for me as we see how obsessed he is with keeping up appearances and looking ‘comfortable’ (being comfortable with yourself is one of the key pieces of wisdom he tries to impart on his strip club employees), even when he know he’s in deep trouble and near to losing all that he holds dear (and so moments when the mask slips and we see in unflinching close ups the pensiveness and anxiety in his face, and the fear behind the showman’s smile it is all the more powerful). He dresses in a tux and drives everywhere in a chauffeur driven limo, treating his incredulous strippers to Dom Perignon champagne and obsessing over details of the show, in one scene calling up the club on assignment to kill the Chinese bookie, and checking in on what number they’re doing (“How can that be the song when there’s only two girls on stage!”). Seymour Cassel and Timothy Agoglia Carey also do a good job of portraying the sleazy menace of men out to extort people at whatever cost.
Cassavetes edits his film to racket up the tension and also breaks up the tension by having long interludes in the nightclub (shot in a startling magenta which separates it from the rest of the film’s world as a world unto itself). We see many of the numbers that Vitelli is so obsessed with and see that they are cheap knock-offs of the more sophisticated numbers (so it says in the insightful new booklet notes by Tom Charity)at the Crazy Horse Burlesque club in Paris. It’s the lowest end of entertainment and shows how out of proportion Vitelli’s obsession is with the shows. While the show’s MC Mr. Sophistication (a brilliantly resigned Meade Roberts), a man clearly down on his luck in a place like that and who envies the attentions the girl’s tits get over him, represents Vitelli’s ultimate fear of being a down and out loser who no-one pays attention to.
But the power of the film and Gazzara’s performance is that we never see him as just another pathetic loser with pipe dreams. Because we see the love for which he has for the people in his club and his ‘girls’ taking them out with him and constantly reassuring them and giving them pep talks, we also see how this is his alternative family. A view which is encapsulated in the final scenes at the club when he rambles to a restless crowd about the club and thanks the staff in the knowledge that he may not have much time left; for his life is the club and he would literally risk death for it. And would, as mentioned above, to the last rather appear the consummate showman “working overtime” playing up to what’s expected of him, rather than admit there was anything wrong. Although there are some scenes which are odd and disjointed in their improvisational nature, such as the scene where his girlfriend’s mother (Virginia Carrington) tells him she can no longer support him (though as Charity points out it is important in that it is the one scene where Cosmo is called to account), it is an absorbing character study and I will certainly be watching more of Cassavetes’ films. It’s also worth watching the documentary Anything for John (1993) that comes with the Special Edition which has insightful interviews with key Cassavates players like producer Al Ruban, Gena Rowlands, Peter Falk and Gazzarra detailing Cassavates’ unusual methods and thematic concerns.
