Kino Lorber's Blu-ray should prompt re-evaluations and second looks (for many, a first-ever look) at one of cinema's most noteworthy and little-seen misfires, with an amazing confluence of talent: David Bowie, seeking an encore after his Man Who Fell to Earth acting breakthrough; actor-director David Hemmings; screen sirens Marlene Dietrich and Kim Novak, in final and near-to-last celluloid roles; international star Curt Jurgens; music by the Manhattan Transfer; etc.
Following a poor film-market screening in a two-and-a-half-hour cut, the over-budget Just a Gigolo had a disastrously short-run, fell from sight, and was disparaged by star Bowie (who had spurned Warners' offer of a blockbuster Ziggy Stardust film musical to do this instead).
Holding his own quite well, the rock icon plays Paul Przygodski, earnest and straitlaced scion of an aristocratic Prussian military family, left rudderless after Germany's humiliating 1918 defeat in World War I. Years pass in decadent Weimer Berlin; Paul is wooed by a cabal of emerging Nazis led his ex-commander (Hemmings), but gets recruited instead into a stable of dashing former officers used by a baroness (Dietrich) to romance rich, aging women for money.
Playing off Bowie's androgynous mystique, the protagonist shows little enthusiasm for the charms of female suitors (a luminous Kim Novak as a wealthy widow, effervescent Sidne Rome as a singer-dancer). Paul is more visibly excited by the Brown Shirts but still rejects their inglorious fascist-thug tactics.
Paul is not a particularly heroic or self-actualizing figure (perhaps explaining Bowie's displeasure), but he embodies the title song very well; he's just a gigolo, and life indeed, ironically, goes on without him.
With a tone varying from slapstick to tragedy, the film fits with a number of glossy, iconoclastic mock-epic period pieces of the 1970s that mixed nostalgia with satire and jaded cynicism, from the sublime Little Big Man to the critic's darling Stavisky to the lush flops Nickelodeon and Lucky Lady.
Kino Lorber's release includes as extras the hyperbolic original trailer and a filmed reflection by the writer-producer Joshua Sinclair and second-unit cameraman Rory McLean, who would go onto a noteworthy career as an author. McLean provides the poetic commentary track; he regards the film as too derivative of Bob Fosse's Cabaret and suffering from offscreen chaos and Hemmings' cinematic mood swings. That seems a bit unkind, as those very qualities make it a non-formulaic viewing experience.
An enclosed brochure (authored by Sinclair and Graham Rinaldi) retells the amusing narrative of how legendary Dietrich, still glorious at 76, was coaxed out of self-exile retirement in Paris for her precious two scenes. Recommended. (Aud: P)