Film

King of the Gypsies (1978)

Director: Frank Pierson

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

This starts in the rematch-for-retards category - reuniting Sarandon and Shields as the selfish mother/saleable daughter team from Pretty Baby - then tries to filter The Godfather through Fiddler on the Roof. Result: a gypsy vernacular of incredible brayings, bleatings, and raspings painfully laced with the Bronx (where much of the action occurs), and numerous crowd scenes resembling some Night of the Living Loviches. Sarandon out-crasses everyone else (matched only by the scene by scene disintegration of Shelley Winters). The Gypsy King's young successor (Roberts) - his decline predestined by the current recession of interest in fortune-telling - tries to make it all mean something: 'This is just temporary...and it's all trashy.' If only he were right; really it's endless and doggedly in earnest.

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