The Hustler features one of Paul Newman’s most tarnished, self-destructive golden boys: “Fast” Eddie Felson. The performance came on the heels of 1958’s Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and pointed the way to 1963’s Hud and 1967’s Cool Hand Luke. Eddie is a small-time pool shark looking to take down the country’s best player: Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason). Eddie has the talent, but—in the words of his sketchy backer (George C. Scott, excellently slimy)—he’s lacking “character.” Whenever things start going his way, he looks for an excuse—usually booze—to lose. Until that point, though, Eddie shines. A trash talker while swiftly sinking shots, he’s always trying to keep his smile from turning into a smirk (and sometimes he’s not trying that hard). Newman’s just as mesmerizing when Eddie is down and out, living in a bus station and sprinkling the smile with self-loathing. It’s at the station he meets Sarah (Piper Laurie), an alcoholic aspiring writer with an equally shaky sense of self-preservation. (After they move in together, she writes about their “contract of depravity”). Laurie is Newman’s equal in these scenes—vulnerable, but never soft. Sarah can play these sad-sack games—their first two flirtation scenes are electric—but she’s also smart enough to see where they’re heading and the depths of despair that likely wait there. As for Gleason, who only has two pool-hall scenes, the Honeymooners star brings a suave stillness to Minnesota Fats, even when he’s gliding around the pool table. (Eddie says he moves like a dancer.) Directed by Robert Rossen (All the King’s Men), who enlivens Eddie and Fats’ lengthy showdown with a poetic montage of superimposed shots of the two men, suggesting the degrees to which they’re in each other’s heads. Also crucial: the seedy jazz notes of Kenyon Hopkins’ score, desperately trying to glamorize Eddie but then petering out on a sustained note of sadness.
(2/26/2023)
