The Gambler (1974)

Alex Freed is a literature professor. He has the gambling vice. When he has lost all his money, he borrows from his girlfriend, then his mother and finally some bad guys that chase his. ... See full summary »

Director:

Karel Reisz

Writer:

James Toback

Stars:

James Caan, Paul Sorvino, Lauren Hutton

Nominated for 1 Golden Globe.

Cast

Cast overview, first billed only:
James Caan	...	Axel Freed
Paul Sorvino	...	Hips
Lauren Hutton	...	Billie
Morris Carnovsky	...	A.R. Lowenthal
Jacqueline Brookes	...	Naomi Freed
Burt Young	...	Carmine
Carmine Caridi	...	Jimmy
Vic Tayback	...	One
Steven Keats	...	Howie
London Lee	...	Monkey
M. Emmet Walsh	...	Las Vegas Gambler
James Woods	...	Bank Officer
Carl W. Crudup	...	Spencer
Allan Rich	...	Bernie
Stuart Margolin	...	Cowboy

Storyline

Alex Freed is a literature professor. He has the gambling vice. When he has lost all his money, he borrows from his girlfriend, then his mother and finally some bad guys that chase his. Despite of all this he cannot stop gambling.

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Plot Keywords:

gambling | professor | point shaving | prostitute | new york | 

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Taglines:

For $10,000 they break your arms. For $20,000 they break your legs. Axel Freed owes $44,000.

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Genres:

Crime | Drama

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Certificate:

R

Details

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Release Date:

October 1974 (USA)

Also Known As:

Spieler ohne Skrupel

Filming Locations:

Tucson, Arizona, USA

Company Credits

Production Co:

Paramount Pictures

Technical Specs

Runtime:

111 min

Sound Mix:

Mono

Color:

Color (Eastmancolor)

Aspect Ratio:

1.85 : 1

Did You Know?

Quotes

Hips: [following the big college basketball game, in which Spencer Lewis has shaved points for the Mafia to pay off Axel's gambling debt] ... Okay, we're in the clear. In fact, you might just have a couple of favors coming your way.
Axel Freed: How's that? What do you mean?
Hips: What are you, naive? This Lewis kid's got maybe a year or two left before he makes the NBA. You think my friends are gonna let him just slip through their fingers, after a night like this?
Axel Freed: He did it for ME. He won't do it again.
Hips: Ah, quit lying...

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Connections

Referenced in Capitalism: A Love Story (2009)

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Soundtracks

"Una furtiva lagrima"
Sung by Enrico Caruso
Courtesy RCA Records

User Reviews

Toback's existential macho, Gulf & Western style

It suggests what TAXI DRIVER would have been if Paul Schrader had gotten his wish--a "Tiffany director" and the studio red carpet. In other words, Paul Schrader would never have become Paul Schrader--he would have become James Toback, an interesting eccentric who derailed a promising start in a would-be-Dostoevskyan pileup of poontang, shylock debts, and deli-clerk assignments for Warren Beatty.

As always, Toback's schtik is existential macho, filtered through Dostoevsky and through Rojack, his near-namesake, the Raskolnikov-like antihero of Mailer's AN AMERICAN DREAM. In FINGERS, Toback's one true-blue masterpiece, the Tobackian alter ego is a young turk driven nutty by a split parentage: dad's a fading gangster, mom's a wacko concert pianist. In THE GAMBLER, the hero is an unironically intended caricature of a Jewish prince: an English professor at Columbia with a loving, unshrewish mom, a gangster-turned-tycoon grandfather, and a horsy shiksa by his side. (This being 1974, the horsy shiksa is inevitably Lauren Hutton.) Mini-Toback (James Caan) is into his bookie (Paul Sorvino, playing ditzy less well than his daughter) for forty-five grand--and every time he gets close to get out of harm's way and making it back, he lays it on the line again. "Ya know how all gambling addicts are alike?" asks dizzy Sorvino. "Yeah! They all wanna lose," sighs Mini-Toback.

Directed by Karel Reisz in the undistinguished and expensive-looking manner of prestige studio movies of the seventies--the seventies movies we DON'T remember--the movie bakes out most of Toback's aromatic screwiness. But when Mini-Toback really gets in hot water, the filmmakers know how to tighten the screws and produce a churning, nauseating tension. (Abel Ferrara used this plot almost twenty years later, but there's not the same anxiety in BAD LIEUTENANT--you know Harvey's goin' down.) Caan isn't bad --he's less his usual grinning, cocksure self than usual, and his teaching scenes aren't half bad. THE GAMBLER and FINGERS, for all Toback's posturing, are pretty gripping diagnoses of male pathology--so where did Toback go? What made this guy plummet from crazy young man to dirty old man in such an awful hurry?