The Gambler (Reisz, 1974): Prince Charles Cinema, 6pm
This film, starring the late James Caan, is part of the Cinematic Jukebox season at the Prince Charles Cinema. Full details here
Time Out review:
James Caan's gambler (a fine performance) is a university lecturer who gets
into hot water with the mobsters over his debts, and uses Dostoievsky to
intellectualise his weakness into tragic compulsion. Predictably, his
increasingly desperate measures are at the expense of those closest to
him, and are accompanied by a deepening masochistic streak. In keeping
with this definition of classic impulses, Karel Reisz's direction is
panoramic, with aspirations towards the epic, when it should have been
closer in and faster. The result is a highly melodramatic and romantic
film, for all the veneer of disillusion, whose weighty statement too
often swamps the potentially strong suspense. The Gambler looks all the more old-fashioned for coming in the wake of Robert Altman's systematic demythology of the subject in California Split; and James Toback showed how his script might perhaps have been tackled when he came to make his own directing debut with Fingers.
Chris Peachment
Here (and above) is the trailer.
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