The Best Old Movies on a Big Screen This Week: NYC Repertory Cinema Picks, May 18-24
The Hustler (1961)
Directed by Robert Rossen
Rossen’s classic adaptation of Walter Tevis’s novel of a querulous yet fearful postwar America afforded Paul Newman his signature role—probably his greatest—as Fast Eddie Felsen, a sneeringly cocky young pool shark seeking to topple Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason, austerely knowing despite his girth) from his perch as the unofficial world’s best. Eddie has to gain character first, navigating whiskey, smoke-filled pool halls, antebellum mansions, the predations of the cynical gambler who stakes him (George C. Scott), the tragic affections of a vulnerable woman (Piper Laurie), and his own callow sense of entitlement. It goes almost without saying that this near-perfect parable has little to do with the game of pool. It’s about temptation, punishment, and salvation. Every performance is brilliant, Newman’s most of all, yet he had to wait 25 years, until he reprised his role as Eddie in Scorsese’s sequel The Color of Money, to get his Oscar. Go figure. Jonathan Stevenson (May 24, 8pm at Tenant416)