You should never trust a woman, especially when she tells you the truth. In the cult years of Western cinema 60-70-ies, when it would seem times full of style, comfort, freedom and careless elegance, no longer needing short hairstyles and militaristic fashion, finally came, and the paranoia of wars and rivalries shamefully escaped from the battlefield, in those days of prosperity and glam, 20 years before the personal crisis of the society of the 90s and zero was removed one of the "protothrillers". It turned out to be the film “Taste of Gambling”. And then nothing was known about the plot being prepared against this light and charismatic film by an army of new Russian, Hong Kong and American gangsters - from Broken Lantern Street and Boomer - to all the masterpieces of Tarantino, Ang Lee, Oliver Stone, Lance Mangia and Alex de la Iglesia. Heirs of flower children, while they are trying to kill representatives of the Roman Club, bathe in the sea, continue to work as a programmer and artist, and naively believe in the omnipotence of the police to the singing of birds.
The appearance of this work, created by Brian Carton, Don Sharp, Ben Healy, if it was shot in our time, would probably seem something incomprehensible, because this thriller, characterized by the complete absence of suspense, put the "i" of the person, "/i" and not the interests of corporations, emphasized the soul and love, not the embargo or criminal games of the mafia, and moreover, this film put the woman first, gracefully highlighting both her uniqueness as a person and her feminine essence with all these false values, showing that she can not be rivals for money and power.
Made in the spirit of Bridget Bardot (or Roger Vadim), perhaps I wrote so on purpose, because we have some idea of this style of cinema through them, although in their works the magic of Women was presented too materialistically, this film surpasses them, literally making the cult not so much out of the Woman herself as out of her irrational, mystical, unconscious and even frightening power, which the creators of the work put in the center of a whirlpool of political confrontations and business wars, but not in the way that is usually done to “decorate the beauty of the business, and the essence of the world’s, which it took the sex and the opposite to attract the sex and the essence of the world’s, to attract the trade, and the opposite. In no film have I seen such a presentation, and to reinforce this, the authors talk about NATO, chases, abductions, mysterious encounters, in half with stunning landscapes, sea breezes, dawns and panoramas of southern France and a heap of martini glasses in the halo of a chaste novel, thereby much more exciting consciousness in its inefficiency and enhancing the effect of an unusual and impossible for our era of the mental world of man. It is not often possible to encounter such frank film magic, and from modern cinema it resembles only the “Spy Games”, although the 60-70s, I think, were full of it much more than all modern square time.
Yes, in the 70s there were small attempts to put Woman and Man in the first place - this is "Red Desert", and "Two Weeks in September", and "Don Juan-73", but they were not so convincing, and in most cases we encounter in the movies of the 70s with the drama, slowly but steadily undermining our psyche, preparing it for the dark dramas and thrillers of the threshold of the 21st century: "Live to live", "Cleo from 5 to 7", "Sweet Life", "Blow Up", "Night", "Shuttle", "Tabrench", "Tabree in the past". From this point of view, the Taste of Gambling undoubtedly goes beyond their standard of post-truth, de-identifying our consciousness with decadent existential despair of ourselves, the world around us and the future.
The indisputable, but beautiful eclecticism of the film, which combines psychological drama, criminal tragicomedy, and a love novel, and paradoxical and grotesque in the overall presentation of an impeccable from ethical and aesthetic points of view parody of a spy action movie, strikes with its general magical and atmospheric charisma. Did its creators know about this, did they intentionally shoot the film this way or not?
And although the film takes place in 1969, the girl works as a programmer, and for her intelligence and professionalism in programming (God, it already existed then?!), the owners of corporations are ready to give a lot and compete with each other, and thus, this further strengthens the irrational incomprehensibility of the essence of the main character.
Did the creators of this underrated masterpiece want or not? We don't know about that. Don Sharp will direct in 1973 "Psychomania", with bikers and deals with the Devil surreal reminiscent of the "Car Cemetery" by Fernardo Arrabal, and, of course, the thriller "Dark Places", as naive as many proto-thrillers of those times, including from the hand of master Louis Malle, with the same admirable purity and hope of the 70s, which we are deprived of now; he will become famous after the cult "39 steps" and the strange character of "Harma" - not so much more amazing than the melodrama / horror series.
Eva Renzi, who played the role of Jane Kerrel, in reality preferred not the handsome Paul Headley (David Buck), but the main “noble villain” Hans Baber, played by her husband Paul Hubschmid, shot by his ambiguous secretary, and her image (Kay Walsh) is the second interesting female image of the film, with a emphasized double standard, transmitted exclusively in a theatrical manner: this is just a “ordinary” woman in a queue in the store, but – however, she did not cry impeccursively in there, and does not just leave me behind the mock, but she does not make her mock, but rather impesses.
More and more I discover the cinema of the 60s and 70s, and this era, whose fashion today has made fortunes even to the owners of influential fashion houses, conquers me with the integrity of the natures of their heroes, their aesthetic impeccability and a deep inner world, which I very rarely find in modern cinema. But this film is unusual in the fact that in it you can find a genuine love line, and the surprise of this will be for you when watching the film a breath of fresh air amid the eternal neon night of soul and environmental stuffiness, returning hope and creating, at least, a beautiful mood.
10 out of 10