“Pool is a very boring game if you can’t play it,” director Robert Rossen told his editor, Dede Allen. “But our movie is about character.” And so it is. Which doesn’t mean The Hustler isn’t one of the best sports movies ever made – maybe sport is about character too.
Fast Eddie Felson is indelible Paul Newman, the cocky grin flashing up bullish self-belief but zero class. He’s matched (and more?) by Jackie Gleason’s gliding, decorous Minnesota Fats – both look like real shooters – and by George C Scott’s superbly-contained, watchful presence as the man with the bankroll in his pocket – and that’s the pocket which really counts. Around the pool table, Rossen seems to know all the angles: it’s terrifically exacting and unsentimental. The alcoholic love story with Piper Laurie was bold for the time, but it’s not what you remember afterwards. Novelist Walter Tevis also wrote The Queen’s Gambit and The Man Who Fell to Earth. And Jake LaMotta, Raging Bull himself, has a cameo as a bartender.
Provocative and powerful… Newman gives a restrained, modulated performance, an unusual one in that character development is sought and achieved with utilization only of voice, gesture, intensity.
James Powers, Hollywood Reporter
Robert Rossen
Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, George C Scott, Piper Laurie
USA
1961
English
Indigenous & Community Access
Indigenous Access Tickets Community Access Tickets Ticket Donation Requests
Credits
Screenwriter
Robert Rossen, Sidney Carroll
Cinematography
Eugen Shuftan
Editor
Dede Allen
Original Music
Kenyon Hopkins
Also in This Series
Getting Real charts the evolution of screen acting in American film from 1945-1980, diving into the psychological realism which took audiences somewhere deeper and more authentic than ever before.
Notorious
In the first of our new Film Studies series, Ingrid Bergman is pimped out by US agent Cary Grant to Nazi-sympathizer Claude Rains (ironically the most likeable character in the film). Hitchcock's classic is a prime example of classic Hollywood star power.
All About Eve
Arguably the best backstage melodrama of them all, this story of a young actress on the make seems to have been dipped in acid before the cameras rolled. Bette Davis is the uncomfortably peaking diva Margo Channing and it's her finest role.
Sunset Boulevard
Hollywood on Hollywood: the tale of a screenwriter, Joe Gillis (William Holden), who stumbles into the orbit of a now-forgotten movie star, Norma Desmond (Gloria Swanson), and realizes this silent film diva could be his meal ticket.
A Double Life
In this fascinating lesser known George Cukor picture matinee idol Roland Colman plays a quintessentially English classical theatre actor, Tony John, whose dedication to playing Othello on Broadway leads to jealous fits off-stage.
Red River
Mutiny on the Bounty out on the range. Cattle driver Tom Dunson (John Wayne) is a pioneer, a self-made man who sees no reason to trust anyone but himself. In just his second film, Method man Montgomery Clift is Dunson's adopted son Matt Garth.
12 Angry Men
12 strangers (all of them white men) deliberate on the likelihood that a Puerto Rican teenager murdered his father. It's an open-and-shut case for 11 of them. But Juror 8 (Henry Fonda) is not convinced.
The Heiress
Olivia de Havilland won the Oscar for playing Catherine, a shy and insecure young woman who blossoms under the courtship of handsome gentleman caller Morris (Montgomery Clift). Her wealthy father, Ralph Richardson, looks on with severe skepticism.
A Place in the Sun
George (Montgomery Clift) takes a job in his uncle's firm. But before he can break into the family's charmed inner circle and fall in love with socialite Angela (Elizabeth Taylor), he becomes embroiled with a factory girl (Shelley Winters).
A Streetcar Named Desire
"I don't want realism. I want magic!" declares Blanche du Bois, the tragic heroine who meets her nemesis in her sister's husband, Stanley Kowalski, in Tennessee Williams' great play. Brando's performance as Stanley is a turning point in American acting.
On the Waterfront
Marlon Brando's definitive performance as Terry Malloy, a New York dockworker (and once a promising boxer) who loses faith in his union and his smarter but corrupt older brother Charlie (Rod Steiger) after a whistleblower is murdered.