Long-forgotten David Bowie film Just A Gigolo will get its first UK release

Just A Gigolo, a long-forgotten period film starring David Bowie, is finally set to get its first UK release. Directed by Blow-Up’s David Hemmings, the 1978 film was Bowie’s follow up to Nicolas Roeg’s The Man Who Fell to Earth, and saw him star alongside iconic actors such as Kim Novak and Marlene Dietrich (who performs the titular song, in her final feature film appearance).

Just A Gigolo is set in post-World War I Berlin, and Bowie is cast in the role of Paul von Przygodski, a young Prussian gentleman who “arrives in the trenches in time to be caught in the final explosion of the Great War”.

“After recuperating in a military hospital, where he is mistaken for a French hero, he returns to Berlin,” reads a synopsis. “His family home has been turned into a boarding house, his father is paralysed, and his mother is working in the Turkish baths.”

“Attempting to find a new purpose, his childhood friend, Cilly, abandons him for fame and fortune; his former commanding officer, Captain Kraft (played by Hemmings), tries to persuade him to join his right-wing movement and a widow, Helga von Kaiserling (Kim Novak), briefly seduces him with the finer things in life.”

Admittedly, there’s a good chance that the late musician and actor wouldn’t have been too excited about the digital remaster of Just A Gigolo, which will be released in the UK for the first time on August 16, via Fabulous Films, alongside a 54-page booklet and other extras. In the past, he’s been less than complimentary about the critically-panned production.

“Everybody who was involved in that film – when they meet each other now, they look away,” he’s quoted as saying in a 1980 interview with NME.  “It was my 32 Elvis Presley movies rolled into one.”

You can judge for yourself in the promotional clip shared by Fabulous Films below, and find more information on the film’s debut UK release here. Revisit some of Bowie’s most iconic moments in film here.