The Killing of a Chinese Bookie

Written and Directed by: John Cassavetes












I'll have to be honest: I didn't know what I was getting into when I decided to try watching my first Cassavetes film.  I'd heard his name thrown around as some great art film director, but had never quite felt like I was ready to access his work.  Years went by, until finally I decided to give it a shot, and "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" was recommended as a good jumping in point.

My first reaction was that I didn't like it.  It was slow.  The plot is painfully leisurely, given that the key element of the story is provided in the title.  Meanwhile, there are epic scenes of burlesque shows and the main character (Cosmo Vitelli, played by Ben Gazzara) taking his girls out for a night on the town, which don't seem to add much to the story, and rather feel like they are padding.  All in all, my first impression was negative.  I just didn't see what all the fuss was about.

Yet, for some reason, I wasn't able to merely dismiss it and move on.  It kept nagging at my mind.  I had the strange feeling that I'd missed something important, and when I get that feeling it usually turns out to be true.  I threw the DVD back into the machine and decided to check out the special features.  (For the record, I was watching the 1978 John Cassavetes edit of the film, which is available via the Criterion Collection.)

The biggest key that I had missed was the "American Dream" theme that Cassavetes was trying to convey (though how I missed what is the most common theme is beyond me).  With that context provided, I gained a new appreciation for the film.  The scenes that once felt like padding suddenly revealed exactly what Vitelli's version of the "American Dream" was, and the rest of the film his his desperate attempt to keep it all.  I was also impressed with some of the stylistic elements of making the film that Cassavetes employed, which included a generous crowd of amateur actors with a handful of professionals to raise the bar.

So, the question becomes: Do you need all this information to appreciate the film (be it this film, or any film)?  (Watch out now, or I might drop the "death of the author" bomb.)  I have to admit that my opinion of the film changed significantly with a little bit of research.  But should that research have been necessary?  I missed the "American Dream" point, but was that my fault, or the director's?  I'm willing to go half way on it - I probably didn't give it enough thought, but the director could have made it a bit more accessible.

I will give "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie" this much credit: it made me think.  This is a feature that most movies - the once which aim merely to entertain (not that there's anything wrong with that - don't achieve.  The film made me want to find out more.  And the more enlightened I became about the movie, the better I felt the movie was.  This may not always be the case - sometimes the background material doesn't change my impression.  But, in this case, Cassavetes hooked me.  I'll be checking out more.