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In Praise Of Older Movies

American Gigolo, directed by Paul Schrader, who had earlier written the screenplay for seminal 70s film, Taxi Driver, initiates the 80s, and, 26 years later, looks (and screens) better than ever. With a hyper-cool Moroder/ Blondie soundtrack, Armani fashion, Scarfiotti's lush design (he'd done Last Tango In Paris) and the best-looking actors of the era (Gere and Hutton) it is a lost or at least undervalued classic.

I'd argue several things to contextualize the film, and reassert its value as more than pop culture curio, or naff guilty pleasure:

1. Schrader's script brilliantly (and clearly) inverts Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment, to explore his central characters (a whore, a nihilistic rich person, a detective) and discuss ideas of overcoming morality, admitting sin (or "kink" as it is called here) or ultimately accepting grace, forgiveness, love;

2. The mise-en-scene mirrors and revises both the film noir aesthetic (now in lurid neon greens and pinks and turqoises, retaining the slats of venetian blind lighting - as in Blade Runner) and its antecedents, up to and including Chinatown, and prefigures and makes formally redundant Less Than Zero, beginning the 80s genre of the erotic thriller.

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