THE GAMBLER (1974)
A literature professor and gambling addict borrows money from his girlfriend, his mother, and finally some criminals...

A literature professor and gambling addict borrows money from his girlfriend, his mother, and finally some criminals...
We are often troubled by our own dualities. We long for the tranquillity of order, but yearn for the thrill of danger. Some of us never strike an appropriate balance. This leads us to ask an important question: is it better to live a structured, reasoned life, or lead an existence based on passion and desire? To live in comfort and security, or spend your time balancing on the knife’s edge?
Axel Freed (James Caan) prefers the latter. Though he’s a respected English professor in New York City, he also harbours a hidden dark side: he’s a gambling addict, a hopeless adrenaline junkie. His propensity for chasing the rush of reckless bets has placed him in hot water: he has 24 hours to come up with what he owes—no less than $44,000. Otherwise, his life is forfeit. Truthfully, he’d have it no other way. After all, living on the edge is part of the fun.
Karel Reisz’s The Gambler is criminally underseen. Featuring a career highlight performance from Caan, James Toback’s incredible screenplay weaves philosophical ideas into a rich character study, transforming this story into a singular portrayal of the hopelessness of addiction. In this depiction, we feel as though we’re not just witnessing our hero spiral into debt and loneliness, but that we’re watching a man floundering within a demon’s clutches… and its grip is always tightening.
It causes us to question: who is the gambler as an archetype? What is their mentality? Freed’s propensity to seek out risk—regardless of what he stands to win—reveals much of his character: he craves entropy. Throughout the course of our narrative, there are a number of times when all of Freed’s problems would simply disappear if he simply stopped betting. On more than one occasion, he has the sum of money that will buy him his freedom.
However, to buy himself out in such a manner goes against who he is as a character. Conflict and struggle are the things that provide him with purpose, give him meaning in a painfully humdrum world; the risk of gambling becomes something close to a transcendental experience. It’s for this reason that he doesn’t just want to get even—he wants to get ahead. Similarly, he’s not interested in gaining order from order. Instead, he wants to mould order from out of chaos, proving he’s capable of controlling that which is outside his control.
The fleeting thrills of dangerous betting afford him this sensation. Other addictions pale in comparison: he never looks drunk, and he refuses to indulge in other drugs. The rush from his lifestyle gives him all the high he needs. And no matter how far he falls into the pit of debt, it’s never too much for him to handle. In fact, he’s very aware that he desires a greater problem, an even more unlikely bet, and a larger sum to lose.
That’s because there is always a chance for success—but the more unlikely the victory, the better the rush. As Axel reveals to Spencer (Carl W. Crudup), one of his college students and a basketball prodigy, Spencer rarely manages to sink his shots from more than 20-feet away. So, why should he try? It’s not logical—Spencer comprehends that he’s likely to miss. The only explanation is, in that split second, Spencer believes with all his being that he can sink the shot, that sheer will can make the impossible into a reality. For that reason, he continues to try the longshot—even if he mostly misses.
This mirrors a lecture he gives on Dostoyevsky’s Notes from Underground (1864). In elucidating the root cause of the Russian author’s lament, he focuses on one line: “I admit that twice two makes four is an excellent thing, but, if we are to give everything its due, twice two makes five is sometimes a very charming thing, too.” This is a demonstration of will, an act of emancipation in a world obsessed with orderly thinking and rationality: “Reason is only reason, and it only satisfies man’s rational requirements. Desire, on the other hand, is the manifestation of life itself—of all of life.”
It’s here that we find the dichotomy that’s central to Axel’s character: the polarity between reason and desire. In spite of reason, it’s in human nature to go against what’s rational in an attempt to do something extraordinary. As Axel divulges to Spencer, he may understand that a shot from halfway across the court has a slim chance of going in: “But for that one second before you shoot, you’re certain it will. All athletes and poets know that. It’s their secret connection. They know it’s going in. They know… that two and two are five.”
Axel Freed has found the greatest demonstration of his defiance of logic: gambling. With this vice, he can shrug off the weight of a meaningless, structured existence. As he holds fate in his hands, he renders himself a god, capable of moulding the ethereal into a definitive shape. After all, gambling is desire incarnate, a ceaseless, bottomless reserve of dopamine spikes: will it land on red or black?
In a demonstration of free will, he dedicates himself to an endeavour that can only really be defined as futile; there’s a reason that the house always wins. But it doesn’t matter to Axel—it’s about the act itself, the desire to place himself on the verge of a miraculous achievement, a perennial chase. It’s for this reason that whether the money is lost becomes irrelevant: “I’m not going to lose it—I’m going to gamble it.”
He cannot fathom wasting money—but gambling to him isn’t a waste. It serves a function. This brings us to another important question: is gambling a demonstration of one’s free will, or proof that they have none? That people could put their entire lives in the hands of fate, their security on the roll of dice. That one’s financial future, their physical health, and the safety of their loved ones is all dependent on the flipping of a card.
It’s human to desire, often in defiance of reason. As Axel is in the car with Carmine (Burt Young), a mobster thug, the criminal bemoans the fact he didn’t go to school like his nephew, who’s training to become a hotel manager. Axel shrewdly reminds Carmine that he has all he needs: “Look what you’ve got. Fresh air. Open road. Free afternoon.” This is Axel’s reason speaking—but he’s incapable of directing his powers of rationality at himself. It’s easy to point to the logical shortcomings in other people’s thinking, but very different to reflect on it yourself.
Axel is by no means unintelligent—it’s not that he’s bad at maths. He just loves the risk, even more than the success. Much like in Quiz Show (1994), great human intellects are soured by the more perverse, darker human urges. It is shown to be a ceaseless battle that defines the human condition: will you define your life based on virtue, restraint, and rationality, or indulge your darker predispositions for depravity, impulse, and desire?
This contrast is reflected in another prominent historical figure: George Washington. Reading from a famous essay that excavates the psychology of America’s first president, Axel states: “That he wanted women violently, but stayed tied to the apron of his wife. That he lived in constant rage, but lost his temper only once. That he was a man of massive size and frame, but wore waistcoats, lace, and gloves.” Terrified of failure, Washington strove to eliminate risk, meaning he was defined by his restraint.
Washington is shown to be the foil to Axel’s impulse-driven lifestyle. Axel relishes being outside of control, of surrendering himself to risk. It’s a mentality that leads him closer and closer to utter ruination. Our animalistic, primal impulses must be tempered, or we isolate ourselves from society. This was a theme explored later in the equally brilliant Fight Club (1999), but it’s done with a much more profound sense of realism in Reisz’s film.
In his attempts to create something fantastic out of his existence, something intangible, Axel loses everything that made his life truly meaningful. He watches as his girlfriend Billie (Lauren Hutton) walks away from him, yet he is glued to the phone, determined to make one final bet before the lines close. His mother Naomi (Jacqueline Brookes) knows she will never see her money again, but there’s one thing she can’t do, and that’s bear the alternative.
Toback’s script never once becomes a run-of-the-mill gambling drama, mostly due to the solid bedrock of philosophical introspection and thematic resonance. The fact that it’s loosely based on Dostoyevsky’s The Gambler helps, too. There is a meditative, existential tone to the film; one could compare the absurdity of Axel’s endeavour to the absurdity of life itself. After all, why does any of it truly matter?
As Axel sits on the beach and gazes out at the ocean, a quiet moment of reflection occurs. With his finger, he writes $44,000 in the sand. That figure will be washed away in the tide, his mistakes and all the actions he’s taken in this life disappearing forever, expunged and forgotten in time. It’s for this reason that he can be so practical about his situation: “I gambled, and I lost.”
Indeed, it becomes more and more apparent that Axel’s hopelessly nihilistic; his gambling addiction is his way of not looking directly into the abyss. His mother, however, is not as nihilistic as her son; for her, actions have meaning. Outside his frivolous spending, she even considers his association with these clubs and the crooks that run them as unethical. She understands how they take his money and pump it into drugs, prostitution, and other societal ills: “Have I been such a failure that I’ve raised a son to have the morals of a snail?!”
Besides the great number of ideas floating around in this story, the exceptional performances turn it into a must-watch from Hollywood’s most experimental era. I would consider this to be James Caan’s best performance. He’s competently supported by Lauren Hutton and Jacqueline Brookes, the two women in his life whom he isolates through lies and betrayals.
There’s also Paul Sorvino in a fantastic showing, who was screaming fake Italian down the phone at debtors well before he became a mob boss in Scorsese’s seminal crime drama Goodfellas (1990): “Anything that sounds Italian scares the shit out of them.” Burt Young’s fleeting appearance mirrors the violent husband he portrayed in Chinatown (1974) of the same year. Meanwhile, James Woods has a tiny (but memorable) cameo, 10 years before he achieved leading-man status in Once Upon a Time in America (1984).
The film appears to stop and ask us: do any of our actions carry weight? Or is life just one long throw of the dice? Is Axel’s gambling an addiction, or a way of life? And perhaps more importantly, when do the two become one and the same? Maybe it’s when we see that Axel continues even when he’s broke: when he no longer has any more money to gamble with, he’ll gamble with the only thing he has left—his life. Truthfully, it’s what he’s always been gambling with. The money was never the point.
That’s because for someone like Axel Freed, to live is to risk it all: the bigger the risk, the greater the reward. The more insane the odds, the sweeter the victory. And the further away he gets from the basketball hoop, from 20, to 30, to 40-feet away, the more tantalising the rush will be. As Billie implores him to stop once again, Axel divulges: “I like the uncertainty.” That is life. Gambling is a demonstration of the fact that he is still alive.
He is not the strategic George Washington, steadfastly in control of his emotions. He is the mercurial addict, a slave to his impulses. Certainty bores him, and stability frustrates him beyond measure. This is a man who can quote William Shakespeare and E.E Cummings, who can divulge the philosophical intricacies of Dostoyevsky, yet he decides to dwell in the gutter, pressing a rusty blade into his neck, daring his attacker to push. That’s because it’s in the gambler’s nature to risk—and nature abhors a vacuum.
USA | 1974 | 111 MINUTES | 1.85:1 | COLOUR | ENGLISH
director: Karel Reisz.
writer: James Toback.
starring: James Caan, Paul Sorvino, Lauren Hutton, Morris Carnovsky, Jacqueline Brookes, Burt Young, Carmine Caridi, Vic Tayback, Steven Keats, London Lee, M. Emmet Walsh, James Woods & Carl W. Crudup.