A Series of Writings on Films that I feel are essential for film lovers, coupled with films that are personal to me. Spoilers for those you haven't seen the film.
Robert Rossen's The Hustler is one of the darkest and most honest films to come out of Hollywood. The film isn't about winning a pool game but hard-won wisdom and the limitations of talent without character.
At this point in his career Rossen already had a Best Picture Oscar winner to his name (1949's All The King's Men) and boxing drama Body and Soul with John Garfield, among others. His collaboration with Garfield is bitterly ironic. Rossen "named names" before the House Un-American Activities Community (HUAC), which he did after initially refusing and being blacklisted Garfield was blacklisted for the rest of his career for refusing to cooperate. Garfield's career was tragically cut short by a heart attack at age 39. The Hustler would be Rossen's penultimate film, his last being 1964's Lilith, starring Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg. Tensions on the set caused Rossen to quit film-making. He would die two years later in 1966.
In The Hustler Paul Newman plays Fast Eddie Felson, a talented but arrogant pool shark who challenges the pool hall legend Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) to a match. Gleason is known for his role on the classic sitcom The Honeymooners but here gives a restrained and imposing performance. Fats doesn't speak much. He doesn't need to showboat. He knows he's the best and commands respect.
While Eddie gets ahead, he's too stubborn and drunk to quit, inevitably losing. He gives his partner and mentor Charlie (Myron McCormick) the last of his money and leaves, leading to a faithful encounter with a woman who'll change his life.
Structurally, the film is almost nothing but pool from its pre-credits sequence through the match with Fats. It's almost 40 minutes until "the girl" is introduced. This is Sarah Packard (Piper Laurie), who has a limp, goes to college except on Tuesdays and Thursdays. Usually the female "love interest" would enter the film earlier or be a part of the main character's life before the story starts but it's not until what is essentially the second act in which Sarah appears. She's the first character we and Eddie meet that isn't part of the pool hall world. She's also the first person with whom Eddie is taken aback. This all gives her entrance more of an impact. The story not so much changes but gains a complex new person. This relationship complicates Eddie's desire to defeat Fats. He may eventually have to choose between his obsessive quest and her love. Laurie isn't a typical Hollywood beauty but she brings a rawness and peculiar aura to Sarah which makes her stand out among other actresses of the time.
Charlie finds Eddie but is spurned by him. Charlie tried to stop the match with Fats and Eddie believes Charlie is more interested in buying his own pool hall with the money makes from Eddie.The rejection of Charlie is Eddie's cruelest moment and marks a turning point in the film. Eddie re-encounters gambler Bert Gordon (George C. Scott), who witnessed the match with Fats. He tells Eddie that what beat him was his lack of character but he'll stake him for 75% of Eddie's winnings, which Eddie refuses. It's only when Eddie's thumbs are broken after being exposed as a hustler during a game- and after they're healed- does Eddie accept Bert's offer. Sarah is brought along on the trip to Louisville, which ends in tragedy.
This was only Scott's third film, his previous being Otto Preminger's Anatomy of a Murder, where he played the ruthless prosecutor Claude Dancer, a role for which he received his first Oscar nomination. Scott was great at being a bastard. He brings a cat-like quality to the role of Bert, a man whose attacks of emotional violence sting harder than any physical violence.
Stylistically, The Hustler is positioned where film noir and neo-realism meet. Eugen Scufftan's Oscar winning cinematography envelops us in the smoky atmosphere of pool halls, where night can lead in to day without notice. Outside the pool room the cinematography takes on a more social-realist feel. The first encounter between Eddie and Sarah feels right out of a British New Wave film by Tony Richardson.
I want to highlight two of Rossen's and Scufftan's visual choices. In the aforementioned scene when Eddie's thumbs are broken, Eddie is taken in to an office and his face is pressed against the
glass. We don't see the thumbs being broken, only hear and see Eddie in pain. As is often the case, the implication of violence is nastier than the complete of details of a violent act.
Notice in the below shot how Bert is positioned in the background, almost like a little devil on Eddie' shoulder. For me, the shot also symbolizes how Bert's words will stick in the back of Eddie's head. And I think it's important that Burt doesn't sit down next to Eddie, a display of Burt and Eddie not being on equal grounds. It's not until Bert offers Eddie the deal that he comes up to him, emphasizing the importance of what this will mean for Eddie.
Now, I've gone on quite a bit without talking about The Hustler's most important player, figuratively and literally. It's time to talk about Newman. Before this film Newman had already received an Oscar nomination for Cat on a Hot Tin Roof but he was still attempting to prove himself as an actor. On the "Newman at Fox" featurette on the DVD/Blu-ray, the subjects being interviewed emphasized how Newman was largely seen as the handsome co-star and husband of the talented Joanne Woodward. After she and Newman were married she had already won an Oscar for The Three Faces of Eve. With The Hustler Newman showed he could carry a film on his own, solidified him as a major actor and star.
Newman has an inherent charisma and charm which gets the audience on Eddie's side despite his self-destructive nature plays Eddie with an almost child-like and care-free innocence at the beginning of the film. He compares the pool hall where he plays Fats to a church. Pool is his religion and he has complete faith in his ability. He becomes bitter after his defeat, his first dose of reality. By film's end Sarah commits suicide due to Bert's abusive attitude and Eddie inability to properly articulate his love for her. After Sarah's death Eddie truly matures in to a man of character. He rejects Bert like he did Charlie but this time with good reason. By doing so and denying Bert his owed money he is no longer allowed to play pool. Eddie is now without his religion. Now he lives in reality, beyond the confines of his church.
The final shot of the film shows Bert, alone. Despite his talk of character he is revealed throughout the film as a man without character, incapable of love, more interested in money than passionate about anything. If Bert was the devil on Eddie's shoulder than Sarah was the angel. Looking back, when she tells Eddie (after his speech about his passion for pool). "You're not a loser, Eddie, you're a winner. Some men never get to feel that way about anything," she's really summing up the Eddie and Bert perfectly. Sarah is the tragic heart of the film, seeing herself as "Perverted, twisted, crippled," but is Eddie's ultimate salvation.
No comments:
Post a Comment