The Hustler

One of the All-Time Greats of American Cinema, The Hustler is the redemption story of Eddie Felson, a god with a cue stick in his hand, a born loser without.  The film opens with a (rightly) legendary 40 minute pool sequence as the cocky young hustler Eddie challenges the reigning pool king Minnesota Fats (memorably played by Jackie Gleason).  During the course of the marathon contest, the victory Eddie's magnificent pool shooting ability seems to have earned is slowly lost in a torturous fall that reveals his many character defects: vanity, ego, recklessness, selfishness.  After pitifully begging Fats to continue the match, a pathetic Eddie ends up collapsing to the floor in a drunken, exhausted heap, a broken, beaten man.

After his humiliating defeat, Eddie sneaks off from his manager.  He stows his gear in a locker in a bus station, and then happens across a solitary woman in the station diner.  They quickly bond over their shared penchant for drowning their sorrows in a liquor bottle.  It is at this point The Hustler splits into two great character studies: Eddie and Sarah, a kind of yin and yang of American losers. Eddie is good-looking, Sarah is plain.  Eddie is physically gifted, Sarah is crippled.  Eddie is callous, Sarah is hyper-sensitive.  Eddie is cocky, Sarah is timid.  Eddie is disinterested, Sarah is a searcher.  They are brought together by desperation, loneliness and alcohol, and it's a match that can only end in tragedy. Paul Newman's performance as Eddie is rightly regarded as one of the best, but often overlooked is Piper Laurie's Sarah.  Laurie, just ugly enough not to be pretty, and just pretty enough not to be ugly, gives an equally brilliant performance as the fragile bookworm Sarah, who is as reckless with her heart as Eddie is with his pool talent.  Sarah's love is trampled under Eddie's selfish desire to take one more shot at Minnesota Fats.  Casting his lot with the unscrupulous gambler Bert Gordon (George C. Scott in a typical blowhard performance), Eddie neglects Sarah in her hour of need, abandoning her to drink her way into a degrading encounter with Bert, and a suicide with a short, painful note scrawled in lipstick on a bathroom mirror:

Sarah's suicide is a self-sacrifice that pierces Eddie's callous, selfish exterior and leaves him with a guilty conscience.  Sarah had answered his cry for help when he was at his lowest, and his refusal to do the same for her produces the self-abasing humility he needs to secure his victory over Minnesota Fats in their rematch.  Compared to the lengthy, dramatic opening encounter, the final match is anti-climatic, and rightly so, the result not nearly as relevant as its catastrophic cost.  The Hustler remains sixty years after its release cinematic drama at its finest.