The Gambler (Karel Reisz, 1974)

I first saw The Gambler on late-night television in the late 1970s while I was still in high school, on a major network "Late Movie" program that aired on Friday night at 11:30pm after the local news, and after my parents had gone to bed.  This was before we had a VCR or cable TV, and because my parents wouldn’t take me to R-rated movies (One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest was the rare exception), it was courtesy of these late-night movie programs that I first saw "mature" films such as Bonnie & Clyde, Blow-Up, and The Gambler, in censored, full-frame pan & scan format with commercials.  And they were a revelation.  The Gambler, in particular, had a profound impact on me, which may come as a surprise, because I despise gambling (although I love films about obsessive-compulsive types who gamble).  It wasn't the film’s pedantic exploration of gambling psychology that so affected me, but rather what it also managed to show: how literature could inform and enrich one's life.

The protagonist, Axel Freed, gambles, shoots hoops, plays tennis, dances… but his day job is teaching literature at City College.  And when he's not teaching, he's still dropping literary quotations into his conversations ("Buffalo Bill is defunct") that sound wise and suggest a deeper understanding of life's mysteries.  Even when he's pushing himself to the edge of self-destruction, he has such acute self-awareness that he seems to be in control—as if he's a character in his own novel, or his favorite novel by Dostoevsky.  I had recently discovered "literature" myself (Salinger, Steinbeck, Hemingway), and I was beginning to realize that these "serious" novels—and these arty late-night movies—provided insights far more worldly and profound than the predictably practical advice I received from my parents and K-12 teachers.  It wasn't apparent to me then or for years to come, but now in retrospect it makes sense that I'd eventually study literature and film and become a college professor, like Axel Freed.  It also wasn't yet apparent to me that not every family values education and scholarship like Axel's (Jewish) mother and grandfather.

In due course I'd come to realize that, like every other movie featuring a college professor, The Gambler never shows the real work professors do—the course prep, the grading, the meetings, the research—and instead only shows the prof waltzing into class and dropping a few choice bon mots before class is dismissed (what a cool job, I thought).  More absurdly, in this case the professor has stayed up all night gambling and losing money he doesn’t have, and then he strolls in and—get this!—he discusses the implications of "2+2=5" from Notes From Underground!  His course readings intersect with his life experience—even stuff he did the night before class!  This is how James Toback’s screenplay falters again and again as he insists on explaining gambling instead of just showing it.

And thus I'd also come to realize that The Gambler is to California Split (also released in 1974) as Fail Safe was to Dr. Strangelove ten years earlier: self-important, pretentious, humorless—for squares.  Altman and Kubrick start with the assumption that we’re all fucked and the world can't be saved, so you might as well dig whatever trip you're on… and if you need explanations or solutions, you're hopelessly conventional and not in on the joke.  How do you "solve" the human thirst for destruction?  You don't.  The Gambler doesn't acknowledge this until its final minute, when Axel studies his bloody face in the mirror, with typical self-satisfaction.  The Gambler ends where California Split begins.

In spite of its literary pretensions, The Gambler offers plenty of cinematic pleasures: Reisz’s sensitive direction, gritty NYC cinematography with Mahler’s moody First swelling in the background, and a bevy of talented character actors.  Even though my estimation of its merits has diminished, it remains a personal touchstone that I still revisit from time to time with affection.