American Gigolo **** (1980, Richard Gere, Lauren Hutton, Hector Elizondo) – Classic Movie Review 1994

Writer-director Paul Schrader’s stylish, unsettling 1980 erotic thriller offers Richard Gere to find the perfect outlet for an intense display of persuasive performing and sexy narcissism.

Gere’s in his element as a male escort called Julian who makes a lucrative living as an escort to older women in the Los Angeles area. He’s the highest paid lover in Beverly Hills. He starts a relationship with politician’s wife Michelle (Lauren Hutton), who begins to fall in love with him. When one of his clients is murdered and Detective Sunday (Hector Elizondo) tries to prise out details on his clients. And when the cops accuse him of the killing, his female customer refuses to give him his much needed alibi. Julian begins to suspect he’s being framed.

Though it’s largely the Richard Gere Show, there’s space in the movie for lovely Hutton and quirky Elizondo to shine too, as well as Nina Van Pallandt, Frances Bergen and Bill Duke. The 1980 audiences found this controversial, daring film noir study in alienation and the place of the outsider in the world a difficult movie, but now it’s found a place to be admired on home viewing. Cinematographer John Bailey’s sleek visuals and Giorgio Moroder’s dynamic score are enormous assets to the film.

Beware the mutilated TV version that cuts the strong language, adult tone and Gere’s full frontal nudity.

Luckily for Gere, John Travolta quit the project, leaving the star role available for his golden opportunity. And writing the controversial hit Taxi Driver gave Schrader the chance to direct his own screenplay for this thriller.

Van Pallandt became famous in the early 1970s as the mistress of hoaxer Clifford Irving, who went to jail when his biography of Howard Hughes, allegedly written with Hughes’ co-operation, proved to be a fake. Gere played Irving in The Hoax (2006) with Julie Delpy as Van Pallandt. She was a singer of folk songs with her husband Baron Frederik van Pallandt. She starred in four Robert Altman movies: The Long Goodbye (1973), A Wedding (1978), Quintet (1979) and O.C. and Stiggs (1985). Frederick was shot dead in May 1994 along with his second wife aboard his yacht in the Philippines, supposedly by river pirates. Truly, truth is stranger than fiction, you could never make any of this up.

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© Derek Winnert 2014 Classic Movie Review 1994

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