Just a Gigolo

Just a Gigolo (1978)

Schöner Gigolo, armer Gigolo

After World War I, a war hero returns to Berlin to find that there's no place for him--he has no skills other than what he learned in the army, and can only find menial, low-paying jobs. He decides to become a gigolo to lonely rich women.

Date of release
1978-11-16
TMDB
5.0 / 10 (34)
Runtime
2h 27m
Genres
Drama
Director
David Hemmings

Casting

Interesting facts

Just a Gigolo is a 1978 West German drama film directed by David Hemmings and starring David Bowie. Set in post-World War I Berlin, it also features Sydne Rome, Kim Novak and Marlene Dietrich in her final film role.

Production

Around the time of its release, David Hemmings said that Just a Gigolo was intended to be "highly ironic, tongue-in-cheek, about the period". Marlene Dietrich was persuaded to come out of retirement to make the film, reportedly receiving $250,000 for two days' shooting.

It was Bowie's first movie role after Nicolas Roeg's The Man Who Fell to Earth (1976). As Roeg's film had played upon Bowie's earlier identification with science fiction and alienness, so Just a Gigolo fitted his interest in pre-war Berlin, pricked by meeting Christopher Isherwood, whose Goodbye to Berlin had inspired the musical Cabaret.

The singer has variously claimed that he took the role "as a favour to Hemmings", who at the time was also planning to produce a documentary of Bowie's 1978 concert tour, and because "Marlene Dietrich was dangled in front of me". The two stars never met, Dietrich played her brief part in Paris, where she lived, with the result simply being cut into Bowie's scenes that were shot, along with the rest of the film, in Berlin.

Read on Wikipedia · Text from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0. Data from Wikidata.

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