Product Description
Paul Newman shines as cocky poolroom hustler "Fast" Eddie Felson in Robert Rossen's atmospheric adaptation of the Walter Tevis novel. Newman's Felson is a swaggering pool shark punk who takes on the king of the poolroom, Minnesota Fats (a cool, assured Jackie Gleason in his most understated performance). After losing big and crashing into a void of self-pity, Eddie meets down-and-out Sarah (Piper Laurie in a delicate performance), an alcoholic blue blood who's dropped into Eddie's world of dingy bars and seedy poolrooms. Eddie regains his confidence and attracts the attention of a shifty, calculating promoter, Bert Gordon (George C. Scott at his most heartless), who offers to bring Eddie into the big money--but at what cost? Rossen brings his film to life with the easy pace of a pool game, giving his actors room to explore their characters and develop into a razor-sharp ensemble. Eugen Schüfftan earned an Academy Award for his shadowing black-and-white cinematography, as did art directors Harry Horner and Gene Callahan for their deceivingly simple set designs. Even in the daylight this film seems to be smothered by night, lit by the dim glow of a bar lamp or the overhead glare of a pool-table light, an appropriate environment for this tale of one man's struggle with his soul and his self-esteem. Newman returned as an older, wiser, cagier Felson 25 years later in Martin Scorsese's Color of Money. --Sean Axmaker
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"Stick with this kid, he's a loser."
The hallmark of Robert Rossen's "The Hustler" is its performances. After repeated viewings, you can still find new facets in Paul Newman's portrait of a loser, Piper Laurie's pathetic alcoholic, Jackie Gleason's Minnesota Fats, George C. Scott's definition of the soul of evil. Repeated viewings of the movie serve to underline the slickness of the story's resolution which seems more and more to indicate that there's nothing like the loss of a loved one to improve your pool game.
Good guys are winners. Bad guys are losers. It used to be as simple as that. But in the Sixties, a new breed called "anti-heroes" had taken over in movies. Who's an anti-hero? Sometimes he's really a good guy who can't help losing. Sometimes he's a rebel who tries to take on the Establishment--and goes down trying. Sometimes he's more a villain than a hero--but a villain who isn't all bad.
Though originally written for "Playhouse 90" back in the late Fifties, "The Hustler" (1961) functioned as a morality play for the early Sixties. Pool shark Eddie Felson (Newman) is the first full-blown non-hero, and a character quite different from the anti-heroes of the previous decade. In the Fifties, such characters were best symbolized by Montgomery Clift in "From Here to Eternity", Marlon Brando in "The Wild One", and James Dean in "Rebel Without a Cause"--troubled, sincere men who suffer much anguish at the hands of an unfair system, but fight to remain true to their own moralities in spite of the world's general amorality. In the Sixties, Newman eclipsed these three superstars: his Fast Eddie is amoral, anguished, and alienated from the world. He is not true to a code of his own--and therefore superior to the mainstream--but only unable to reach out to others. In their films, Brando, Dean and Clift all longed for a sincere woman with whom they could share a separate piece; in "The Hustler", Newman is unable to accept such commitment and communication with his girl Sarah (Piper Laurie).
The anti-hero of the Fifties experiences victory in defeat, cleaning up a lousy system while sacrificing himself in the process; the Sixties non-hero undergoes defeat in victory, winning what he wanted and finding it without value. Newman's demeanor--his intense nervous energy and cool, casual cynicism--found its perfect embodiment in this role, making him a pop-culture idol for a new generation, the star of a new kind of cinema. Director Robert Rossen's sparse, effective screenplay (written in collaboration with Sidney Carroll) and his stark, shadowy scenes set the proper pace for this downbeat tale. But it was Newman's electrifying performance that made "The Hustler" such a smashing experience for viewers. [filmfactsman]