Review: The Hustler (1961)

* * * 1/2
Director: Robert Rossen
Starring: Paul Newman, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Jackie Gleason

Though he bristles when another character calls him a "loser," Eddie (or "Fast Eddie") Felson seems allergic to victory. The only reason he ever seems to be winning is so that he can find a way to lose, pushing and pushing and pushing his luck until it finally runs out and all the gains he's made have disappeared. Paul Newman was already a star by the time he starred in The Hustler, but Eddie Felson is, in many ways, the quintessential Paul Newman role - roguish, troubled, slightly hardened, and overall irresistible; no wonder he played it twice (winning an Oscar for the sequel, The Color of Money, 25 years later). Now 54 years old, The Hustler isn't one of those ageless films that still feels as fresh and revolutionary as it did on its first release, but it is nevertheless one that has aged well enough that it still feels dynamic and alive.

Ebert's Greats #11: Cool Hand Luke (1967)

* * * *
Director: Stuart Rosenberg
Starring: Paul Newman

“What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.” It’s the most famous line from Stuart Rosenberg’s Cool Hand Luke but does not encapsulate the film. After all, Cool Hand Luke has been effectively engaging and communicating with audiences for over 40 years. Featuring an iconic performance from the great Paul Newman (and an Oscar winning supporting performance from George Kennedy), this is a film that everyone should see sooner or later.

The Best Picture Countdown #46: The Sting (1973)

Director: George Roy Hill
Starring: Robert Redford, Paul Newman, Robert Shaw

Why is it that, as moviegoers, we are about to be treated to Martin Lawrence’s third outing in a fat suit but only had two opportunities to enjoy the collaboration between director George Roy Hill and actors Paul Newman and Robert Redford? It’s just not right. The Sting is the second of those collaborations (the first being the also excellent Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid), the winner of 1973’s Best Picture, and a smart and stylish film that hasn’t lost an ounce of spark.

Set during the Depression, The Sting centers on Johnny Hooker (Redford), a small time grifter who can’t manage to get ahead without immediately blowing his winnings at the gambling tables. His former partner, Luther (Robert Earl Jones), encourages him to track down Henry Gondorff (Newman), a legendary con man who can teach him how to run “the big con” and finally make a score so big that even he can’t run through it in a day. Before Hooker can find Gondorff, however, he discovers that his last mark was a courier for Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), a fierce crime boss whose goons murder Luther, and that Hooker is next on the hit list. This also puts him on the radar of crooked cop Snyder (Charles Durning), who wants a cut of the money Hooker scammed from Lonnegan.

While dodging all kinds of nefarious characters, Hooker finds Gondorff, who reluctantly agrees to try to scam Lonnegan using a con known as “the wire,” which involves a large number of con artists and a fake betting parlour. Hooker and Gondorff go about setting Lonnegan up, which requires Gondorff to pose as a bookie named Shaw and Hooker to pose as an unhappy underling named Kelly and then gain Lonnegan’s trust by convincing him that together they will scam Shaw (Lonnegan, having never met Hooker, doesn't realize that Hooker and Kelly are the same person). Though Lonnegan throws a few curve balls that force the team to make some quick shifts to their plan, things proceed on track until Snyder drags Hooker into a meeting with the FBI, who convince Hooker that it would be in his best interest to help them arrest Gondorff. As the story approaches its climax, Lonnegan is on track to lose a ton, Gondorff is set to get busted, and the mysterious assassin Salino is determined to kill Hooker.

There are films that you can watch without completely playing attention and there are films that you have to watch with a keen eye. The Sting is the latter type, not only because of the elaborate nature of the central plot but also because there are so many subplots woven into that main plot; the story is something of a juggling act but nary a ball gets dropped. The screenplay by David S. Ward (who won the Oscar for Best Original Screenplay) is really strong, breaking the con up into chapters which denote each phase of the scheme and laying things out in such a way that you can follow what’s going on, but without simplifying it so much that you can’t believe the mark would fall for it. There are plenty of twists and turns, some you can detect before they’re revealed, but others that are kept well enough under wraps that there’s an element of surprise. I think the scene in which the identity of Salino is revealed is particularly well constructed and executed and indicative of the level of craft at play throughout the film.

Of the actors only Redford received an Oscar nomination for this film (to date his only acting nomination), but Newman is equally excellent and both deliver performances that find the right medium between drama and comedy to help set the tone for this tightly plotted caper. As the mark, Shaw renders a terrific supporting performance, crafting Lonnegan so that he’s menacing enough to be believable as a crime lord, but also so openly greedy that it’s believable that he can be taken. To be a good con man, one must possess the ability to read people and the film itself is a great observer of the characters and does a great job at breaking down their weaknesses and showing how those weaknesses can be turned into weapons against them. It isn’t simply a slick film; it’s a very smart one and though it’s arguably not quite as good as Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, it’s definitely in the same rarefied league.

Review: Road to Perdition (2002)

* * *
Director: Sam Mendes
Starring: Tom Hanks, Paul Newman

So beautiful and yet so lacking. Road to Perdition is a handsome and stately film, but one that never really seems to come alive. At times it feels reminiscent of The Godfather films, but while Coppola’s masterful saga brought the audience in, Sam Mendes’ film seems determined to keep us out. We’re meant to stand back from this film and admire it, rather than become absorbed in it and live it. I do admire parts of Road to Perdition, but ultimately never felt very invested in it.

To boil it down to its most basic elements, the film is about fathers and sons and isolation. The fathers and sons theme is obvious and often overtly addressed. The theme of isolation is more obliquely alluded to through the film’s mis en scene and one line from Mike Sullivan (Tom Hanks). “This isn’t our home anymore,” he informs his son, Michael Jr. (Tyler Hoechlin), “it’s just an empty building.” This line is specifically referring to the murder of Sullivan’s wife and younger son, but it applies to scenes throughout the film, as characters are constantly situated in the middle of a great emptiness. The indoor sets seem vast and cavernous; the outdoor sets seem impossibly spacious. The art direction provides us with an indication of the unspoken things the characters are feeling, but it also underscores the basic problem with the film, which is that it is ultimately quite hollow. There doesn’t seem to be anything at the core of this story; it’s all surface.

The film is seen largely through the eyes of Michael Jr., who spends the first 12 or so years of his life emotionally distanced from his father, but gets to know him over the course of about six weeks in the worst possible circumstances. Curious about what it is, exactly, that his father does for John Rooney (Paul Newman), Michael sneaks into the back of his father’s car to see for himself and witnesses a murder. Rooney’s son, Connor (Daniel Craig), who instigated the act, decides that Michael can’t be trusted not to talk and takes it on himself to eliminate the threat, which results in the deaths of Michael’s mother (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and younger brother, but not Michael himself. There is a great moment when Michael approaches his house and sees Connor standing in the window and the film switches to Connor’s perspective and we see that he’s only looking at his own reflection. Later we learn that he doesn’t even realize that he’s killed the wrong son.

Mike and Michael go on the run, robbing banks of mob money and bonding in the process. Michael feels that his father always favored his younger brother, but this isn’t so. Mike simply saw a lot of himself in Michael and it worried him. In a similar vein, Mike is like a son to John, who took him in as a boy, gave him a means to support his family, and treats that family as if it were his own. John sees a lot of himself in Mike and has a warmer relationship with him than he does with his biological son, who he sees as a bungler and a disappointment. Connor is essentially an overgrown child who pouts his way through most of the story and is determined to make everyone else pay for his own mistakes. However, when it comes down to it and Mike gets proof that Connor has been stealing from his father, blood proves to be thicker than water. It has all the elements of Greek tragedy, save and except for the happy (well, happy-ish) ending.

Hanks is obviously playing against type here, though as killers go Mike is a fairly nice one; he always looks very sorry about what it is that he has to do. It is not an entirely successful performance; the only times when he seems really at ease in the role is in scenes with Hoechlin as the relationship between father and son begins to thaw. To be fair, I think this is less a problem with Hanks than it is with the fact that characters feel very locked into the turnings of the plot. The only actor who truly gets around this is Newman, whose two final exchanges with Hanks are electrifying.

To be clear, there’s nothing about Road to Perdition that I think is particularly “bad,” exactly, it’s just that it feels very stiff and very formal. It can’t be denied that the film has moments of brilliance and is at times wholly engrossing, but there’s a lot of affectation at play in the way that it’s constructed. If the film never relaxes, how can the audience?

Review: Hud (1963)

* * * 1/2
Director: Martin Ritt
Starring: Paul Newman, Patricia Neal, Melvyn Douglas, Brandon De Wilde

Hud Bannon is “the man with the barbed wire soul,” a man without principle, a man who never met a person he would think twice about being mean to. He also – inexplicably as far as his portrayer, Paul Newman, was concerned – became a figure of worship in popular culture, a man that younger men wanted to become (in Midnight Cowboy Joe Buck has the famed poster of Hud on his wall). This isn’t the absolute best movie Newman ever made (for me that would be Cool Hand Luke), but of all his performances, this one is my favourite.

Hud is a ne’er do well whose sole interests are women, drinking and fighting, and not always in that order. He lives on a cattle ranch with his father (Melvyn Douglas), his nephew Lon (Brandon De Wilde), and their housekeeper, Alma (Patricia Neal), with whom he enjoys a charged rapport. Hud and his father have a fractured relationship which seems to inform the way that he relates to all other people: fearing rejection, he keeps everyone at a distance, though he longs desperately for companionship.

Problems between Hud and his father reach a crescendo as Hud begins spending more time with Lon, passing on his bad habits, and after a cow dies under mysterious circumstances. The fear is that the cow has succumbed to foot and mouth disease and that the rest of the heard will have to be slaughtered to avoid an epidemic. Hud wants to sell off the cattle before the government can declare them unfit, but his father refuses and they eventually have a confrontation in which he reveals that his dislike of Hud doesn’t stem from the accident which killed Lon’s father, but rather from his lack of character. It’s this lack of character, the refusal to care about anything other than himself, that ensures that Hud will end up exactly where he does: all alone.

The performances make the movie, with all four of the principles delivering solid, nuanced portrayals. Newman ambles seductively through the film, alternating between easy going banter and angry sulking. Rejected by his father, he lashes out at him but remains desperate from some kind of approval from him. When his father makes his brutal proclamation, all Hud can do is throw up his hands and say with a mixture of anger and sadness, “My mama loved me but she died.” Newman hits a complex series of notes throughout the film, making for a character who is difficult to like most of the time, but also compelling in the way that someone who is his own worst enemy can be compelling.

As for the other three, De Wilde is solid playing a young man who finds himself caught between wanting to do the right things like his grandfather, but also seduced in a way by his uncle, who just seems so cool; Neal is wonderful as the no nonsense housekeeper who is drawn to Hud despite knowing better and the scenes between her and Newman crackle with electricity (“Don’t go shootin’ all the dogs 'cause one of 'em’s got fleas,” Hud drawls while lying across her bed); and Douglas is simply marvellous. He’s an actor I find myself consistently surprised by: the actor who plays the worn down old man here is the same as the one who played Garbo’s elegant romantic foil in Ninotchka and the difference can’t be attributed solely to age. Douglas won an Oscar for his work here, as did Neal, and Newman was nominated as Best Actor, but lost to Sidney Poitier for Lilies of the Field. If you’ve never seen this movie, I can’t recommend it more. Rarely do you get the chance to watch four great actors, all at the top of their form, playing off of each other like this.

A Few Words About Paul Newman

1925-2008

If memory serves me right, the first Paul Newman movie I ever saw was Slap Shot. I was probably about 10 and my dad had rented it in order to keep my brother and I occupied for a couple of hours, having remembered liking it but apparently having forgotten all the things that might make it a bit objectionable for two kids to watch. In the years since I continued to discover and rediscover Newman in other films and found him to be a consistently solid actor and consistently likeable – even when he was playing characters you shouldn’t like under any circumstances.

If I had to choose my favourite Newman performance, I suppose that I would ultimately pick his portrayal of the title character in Hud. I know from having read interviews that he was uncomfortable with the fact that Hud ascended to a kind of heroic status in pop culture, but I’m not sure that it could have ever been any other way. Newman is so good in this role, brings so much dimension and vitality to it, that even when you hate Hud, you also empathize with him. It’s a testament to Newman’s ability that the character strikes such a resonant chord and that so many of his other characters do the same.

Newman was one in a million. He was just as talented as Marlon Brando or Montgomery Clift and just as cool as James Dean or Steve McQueen, but he lacked their self-destructive tendencies. He didn’t flame out or let off-screen antics overshadow his talent. Instead he gave us five decades of solid work in front of and behind the camera, creating a varied tableau of films and characters that any actor would covet.

Given the frequency with which the media reported on his failing health over the summer, Newman’s passing isn’t particularly surprising, but it does make me particularly sad. I find myself feeling the way that I felt when Katherine Hepburn or Gregory Peck or Marlon Brando died, as if another inch of the curtain was falling on an era when being a movie star meant more than just being a famous actor. Newman had that old school glamour, that old school charisma that can’t be faked or imitated, that just is. They don’t make 'em like this anymore and he leaves behind a void that will never be filled.

Rest in peace, Mr. Newman. You've earned it.