Croupier
Ireland/Germany/France/UK 1997
Reviewed by Philip Strick
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
Would-be novelist Jack Manfred lives in London with Marion, a store detective. Jack is prompted by his father to become a dealer at the Golden Lion Casino. Trained in South Africa, where his father still works, Jack is a skilful croupier but despises the job. However, he is soon fascinated again by the environment, although the new routine strains his relationship with Marion, who prefers him as a struggling writer.
After Jack gets in a fight with a cheating punter, fellow dealer Bella tends his bruises and they make love. Another casino employee, Matt, also cheats; Jack threatens to expose him and eventually does. Jani, a South African girl, befriends Jack and turns to him when in trouble. Inspired by these events, Jack makes headway with his writing.
Disastrously in debt, Jani passes him £10,000 to create a diversion while her creditors rob the casino. But Marion finds the money and intercepts Jani's phoned signal. Unprepared, Jack is beaten up as the robbery fails. Marion threatens to expose him unless he leaves his job, but is killed suddenly in a road accident. Jack dedicates his finished novel to her. Published anonymously, I, Croupier is a success but Jack accepts he's a one-book writer. Setting up house with Bella, he returns to the casino. Following a phone call from Jani, now in SA, he realises his father was behind the robbery scheme.
Review
To see Croupier as more writer Paul Mayersberg's work than director Mike Hodges' is a powerful temptation. But as Get Carter reminds us (looking on reissue like a cross between Alfie, 1966, and Bande à part, 1964), Hodges is unfailingly professional in matching style to story. He sets up the context for his players with a discretion verging on anonymity and then, on a whim, takes time out for a striking detail (for example, in 1974's The Terminal Man, the silent invasion of white floor-tiles by bloodied water). Even so, given his special fluency with long shots, the confines of Croupier have cramped Hodges considerably: this is a basement-flat London, briefly glimpsed between forests of mirrors.
Reflections are integral to Mayersberg's scenario, as might be expected after the emphatic self-regarding theme of his Eureka script. Hodges' contribution is to fashion the casino as a glass cage of distortions, the eye constantly deceived by misshapen figures and rippled furniture, as unreliable as the occupants. Otherwise, he captures with a merciless accuracy the bedsit decor, the cramped kitchens and sparse sitting rooms, tiny arenas of emotional combat. Even when the scene shifts to a country mansion, the sense of entrapment is maintained, and the camera lingers on a copy of Géricault's painting The Raft of the Medusa in recognition of a similar predicament: despair, madness and an intolerable intimacy unite the drifting group of the near-dead. Where Hodges and Mayersberg also seem well attuned is in the isolation of their wheel-spinner, a recognisable fusion of the two Jacks - Carter and McCann from Eureka - who fell to earth in their separate ways. The croupier particularly resembles Eureka's lost plutocrat in finding his plot of gold, a best-seller, and freezing into satisfied inaction. In fact, Mayersberg's reported starting point for Croupier was Kurosawa's The Hidden Fortress (1958), in which two peasants share a befuddled panic on the edges of a tumultuous history far beyond their comprehension.
In Get Carter the ruthless hitman uncovers a malevolent network for whom his personal vendetta is insignificant. Similarly in Croupier the dealer is not so much crushed as anaesthetised when he learns he's simply been a card in somebody else's winning hand all along. His compensation, apart from a slightly dodgy new girlfriend, is the daily opportunity to indulge in the joyful exercise of numbers, a hobby lifted directly from the father-daughter relationship in Eureka. His 'mission' accomplished, he hails himself master of the game with the power "to make you lose". This dubious accomplishment is neatly celebrated by sweeping the camera (us), along with a pile of gambling chips, down a conclusive black hole.
Part of the intricacy of Croupier (very Mayersbergian) lies in the intermingling of 'fiction' and 'reality', portions of the story being disguised as the croupier's novel. Since all the characters are living their own fictions anyway, the flatly rendered dialogue, spoken as if quoting a text, adds to the sense of a writer shuffling phrases and episodes until he finds the most suitable. At one point the on-screen Jack even corrects the off-screen Jake, who has been chipping in throughout the film with information and opinion. Such ironies aside, and despite earnest performances by all concerned, Croupier is an absorbing rather than an appealing exercise. As the croupier's partner observes on first reading: "There's no hope in it." But the misanthropist is dismissive: "It's the truth," he says.
Credits
- Producer
- Jonathan Cavendish
- Screenplay
- Paul Mayersberg
- Director of Photography
- Mike Garfath
- Editor
- Les Healey
- Production Designer
- Jon Bunker
- Music
- Simon Fisher Turner
- ©Little Bird/ Tatfilm/ Compagnie des Phares & Balises/La Sept Cinéma/Channel Four Television Corporation
- Production Companies
- Channel Four Films presents in association with Filmstiftung NRW/WDR/La Sept Cinéma/ARTE/Canal+ a Little Bird/Tatfilm production in association with Compagnie des Phares
- & Balises
- Produced in association with La Sept Cinéma/ ARTE/Westdeutscher Rundfunk/Canal+
- Supported by filmstiftung NRW
- Executive Producer
- James Mitchell
- Co-producer
- Christine Ruppert
- Line Producer
- Jake Lloyd
- Associate Producer
- Martin Wiebel
- Production Co-ordinators
- German Unit:
- Claudia Hodel
- UK Unit:
- Ingrid Litman
- Production Managers
- Germany:
- Bernd Huckenbeck
- UK:
- Julie Clark
- UK Unit Location Manager
- Mark Shorrock
- Unit Location Manager
- German Unit:
- Gabriele Goiczyk
- Locations, German Unit
- Frank Meter
- Post-production Supervisor
- UK Unit:
- Daniel Lloyd
- Assistant Directors
- Michael Murray
- Jez Murrell
- Richard Walker
- German Unit:
- Ulrike Hamacher
- Sascha Koszinowski
- Continuity
- Catherine Allinson
- Script Associate
- Nicky Ryde
- Casting
- Director:
- Leo Davis
- ADR Voice:
- Louis Elman
- Camera Operator
- Gordon Hayman
- Art Directors
- Ian Reade Hill
- German Unit:
- Alexander Scherer
- Set Decorators
- Gillie Delap
- German Unit:
- Gernot Thöndel
- Costume Designer
- Caroline Harris
- Wardrobe Supervisor
- Nicholas Heather
- Wardrobe
- Anja Bölck
- German Unit:
- Ursula Münstermann
- Make-up Artists
- Horst Allert
- Delia Mündelein
- Additional Make-up
- Artists, German Unit:
- Ulrike Bruns
- Heike Wolff
- UK Unit:
- Amanda Warburton
Titles- General Screen Enterprises
- Musicians
- Saxophone/Clarinet:
- Gilad Atzman
- Guitar/Keyboards:
- Simon Fisher Turner
- Piano:
- Pete Rackham
- Music Producer/Mixer
- Richard Preston
- Sound Recordist
- Ivan Sharrock
- Re-recording Mixer
- Mike Dowson
- Sound Editor
- Colin Miller
- Foley
- Artists:
- Roy Baker
- Felicity Cottrell
- Jack Stew
- Editor:
- Jacques Leroide
- Croupier Trainer
- Carol Davis
- Croupier Adviser
- David Hamilton
- Casino Consultant
- David Harris
- Stunt Arranger
- Graeme Crowther
- Croupiers
- Mary Coy
- David Gant
- Norbert Kleine
- Lynsey Pinsent
- Ulrich Vogel
- Elke Wartmann
- Cast
- Clive Owen
- Jack Manfred
- Kate Hardie
- Bella
- Alex Kingston
- Jani de Villiers
- Gina McKee
- Marion Neil
- Nicholas Ball
- Jack Manfred Sr
- Nick Reding
- Giles Cremorne
- Alexander Morton
- David Reynolds
- Barnaby Kay
- car dealer
- John Radcliffe
- barber
- Sheila Whitfield
- manicurist
- David Hamilton
- casino supervisor
- Carol Davis
- table supervisor
- Eddie Osei
- West Indian punter
- Doremy Vernon
- Claudine Carter
- women
- Ursula Alberts
- Madame Claude
- Neville Phillips
- white-haired man
- Paul Reynolds
- Matt
- Ozzie Yue
- Mr Tchai
- Joanna E. Drummond
- Agnes
- Manfred Heiden
- Mr Tchai's bodyguard
- Ciro De Chiara
- Andros, cheat
- Rhona Mitra
- girl with joint
- John Baker
- Vida Garman
- couple in toilet
- George Khan
- coughing man
- Christine Niemöller
- Pat
- Claudia Barth
- waitress
- Tom Mannion
- Detective Inspector Ross
- Arnold Zarom
- Habib the terrorist
- James Clyde
- Gordon
- Emma Lewis
- Fiona
- Kate Fenwick
- Chloe
- Rosemarie Dunham
- Jewish woman
- Magnus Hastings
- gigolo
- John Surman
- loser
- Mark Long
- Michail Golzarandi
- gangsters
- Karl-Heinz Ciba
- accusing punter
- Loretta Parnell
- Lucy
Simon Fisher Turner- ironic punter
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- BFI Films
- 8,481 feet
- 94 minutes 14 seconds
- Dolby
- In Colour