Fiction

The Hustler

Robert Rossen
USA 1961
130 min
V'08

<![CDATA[<b>]]>In memoriam Paul Newman.<![CDATA[</b>]]>

Paul Newman is „Fast“ Eddie Felson, a disenchanted drifter and young pool shark who challenges the legendary Minnesota Fats. Fast Eddie will be the loser, because he has enough talent but no character (“What beat me?” – “Character”). His manager teaches him psychology of being a winner and Eddie gets a second chance …

Fast Eddie’s “Even if you beat me, I’m still the best!” revises a long tradition of Hollywood underdog winners with a combination of arrogance and recklessness that blows the trope apart. Newman’s hustler is an underdog loser, with the blind, destructive self-love of the jerk who sees himself a hero. The few neutral characters, like Jackie Gleason’s Minnesota Fats, seem to be there for decoration, removed form this moralistic cosmos of the bruisers and the battered. “Fast Eddie, let’s play some pool”, says Fats, dapper and cool, twenty-five hours into a marathon bout with Newman and $ 18,000 down – but, if not a winner, nothing like a loser. Losers have o cool.
(Ethan Mordden)

Credits
  • Jackie Gleason - Minnesota Fats
  • Piper Laurie - Sarah Packard
  • George C. Scott - Bert Gordon
  • Myron McCormick - Charlie Burns
  • Murray Hamilton - Findlay
  • Paul Newman - «Fast» Eddie Felson
  • Robert Rossen
  • Sidney Carroll
  • Eugen Schüfftan
  • James Shields
  • Dick J. Vorisek
  • Dede Allen
  • Kenyon Hopkins
  • Harry Horner
  • Ruth Morley
Rossen Films, Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation

Hollywood Classics Linton House, 39/51 Highgate Road London NW5 1RS, Großbritannien T 207 424 7280 geraldine@hollywoodclassics.co m

35 mm
bw
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