One thing about cinema is that it is like a time machine. Peter Bogdanovich's Saint Jack brought to life a forgotten Singapore in the 1970s, a time filled with gangsters and corrupt cops, local women parading around proudly as hookers. I'm glad we are not like that anymore and our women can count themselves to be some of the most sexually-forward in Asia. Something the detractors and the critics will never admit was a job well-done by a paternalistic government.
Politics aside, the film's premise may be thin on story but its character study makes for one of the more memorable films I've watched. A young Ben Gazzara (Dogville anyone?) stars as the titular character, Jack Flowers, an angmoh pimp operating a small chain of prostitutes to the envy of local gangsters, and then finding his backing from the CIA to operate a brothel for busloads of GIs fresh from the war in Vietnam. For all his flowery words and flamboyant behaviour, Jack Flowers seems at best a man with a dream to earn a fortune but inherently a very empty and lonely soul.
2 comments:
Hi there Xiong. Interesting post and great pics. Saint Jack is a fiction, the reality of prostitution in Singapore is still very much alive today. Singaporean women may be "sexually forward"... but the foreign women and girls who are brought here for sex, often illegally, don't have any such luxury. Hence SIngapore was highlighted as a human trafficking hot-spot this year. Anyway, if you're curious to know more about the film, go to a library and get my book Kinda Hot: The Making of Saint Jack in Singapore...Cheers! Ben Slater
Hi Ben, great to see you here! Understand that we're high on the list of human trafficking and clearly something to address. I will keep a look out for the book! And thank you too for all your effort in keeping this film very much alive for Singapore and Singaporeans.
Post a Comment