It occurred to me as I was watching “The Hustler” that you could never make a pool/billiards movie today. Not that you couldn’t make a sports movie with its similar structure, but 2011 in America is the wrong time and place for a movie about pool. How many people actually watch it, play it professionally, go to pool halls (is that even a thing anymore?) and least of all attempt to make a living by going around hustling other people through gambling?
That’s not to say “The Hustler” is dated, but the gravitas Robert Rossen’s film pays it seemed a bit much to me. Think of what are intended to be staggeringly dramatic shocks when Paul Newman as Fast Eddie Felson gets his thumbs broken or realizes that he won’t be playing the rich gentleman in straight pool but in billiards (who knew there was a difference?).
The film was nominated for nine Oscars, won two, put Paul Newman on the map as not just a movie star but a genuine A-lister (for that I am thankful as he is one of my favorite all-time actors) and inspired a quasi-sequel over 20 years later starring Newman, Tom Cruise and directed by Martin Scorsese.
This film, unlike Scorsese’s one-dimensional sports movie “The Color of Money,” gives a lot of weight to other characters (including the pool hall legend Minnesota Fats as played by Jackie Gleason and the cruel gambling manager Bert played by George C. Scott) and a tortured romance between Eddie and his alcoholic girlfriend Sarah (Piper Laurie). But these additions to the plot come all too late, following a very long pool scene between Fast Eddie and Fats in which Eddie has a nervous breakdown of sorts after losing to Fats in a series of games lasting over a full day. Frankly I thought any love story to be introduced to what I thought would be a straight film about pool would come out of left field, and Eddie’s relationship with Sarah is no exception.
Mine is not the popular opinion on this movie, an American character made so iconic by Newman that he was later given his only Oscar for portraying him again in Scorsese’s film. But somehow I was unimpressed by the plot even though the performances, especially Newman’s, are all enigmatic and all the balls drop smoothly in their pockets.