The Hustler (1961)

Tagline: A searching look into the innermost depths of a woman’s heart… and a man’s desires!

The Hustler movie storyline. “Fast” Eddie Felson is a small-time pool hustler with a lot of talent but a self-destructive attitude. His bravado causes him to challenge the legendary “Minnesota Fats” to a high-stakes match, but he loses in a heartbreaking marathon. Now broke and without his long-time manager, Felson faces an uphill battle to regain his confidence and his game.

It isn’t until he hits rock bottom that he agrees to join up with ruthless and cutthroat manager Bert Gordon. Gordon agrees to take him on the road to learn the ropes. But Felson soon realizes that making it to the top could cost him his soul, and perhaps his girlfriend. Will he decide that this is too steep a price to pay in time to save himself?

The Hustler is a 1961 American drama film directed by Robert Rossen from Walter Tevis’s 1959 novel of the same name, adapted for the screen by Rossen and Sidney Carroll. It tells the story of small-time pool hustler “Fast Eddie” Felson and his desire to break into the “major league” of professional hustling and high-stakes wagering by high-rollers that follows it. He throws his raw talent and ambition up against the best player in the country, seeking to best the legendary pool player “Minnesota Fats”. After initially losing to Fats and getting involved with unscrupulous manager Bert Gordon, Eddie returns to try again, but only after paying a terrible personal price.

The film was shot on location in New York City. It stars Paul Newman as “Fast” Eddie Felson, Piper Laurie as Sarah, George C. Scott as Bert, and Jackie Gleason as Minnesota Fats. The Hustler was a major critical and popular success, gaining a reputation as a modern classic. Its exploration of winning, losing, and character garnered a number of major awards; it is also credited with helping to spark a resurgence in the popularity of pool.

The Hustler is fundamentally a story of what it means to be a human being, couched within the context of winning and losing. Describing the film, Robert Rossen said: “My protagonist, Fast Eddie, wants to become a great pool player, but the film is really about the obstacles he encounters in attempting to fulfill himself as a human being. He attains self-awareness only after a terrible personal tragedy which he has caused — and then he wins his pool game.” Roger Ebert concurs with this assessment, citing The Hustler as “one of the few American movies in which the hero wins by surrendering, by accepting reality instead of his dreams.”

The film was also somewhat autobiographical for Rossen, relating to his dealings with the House Un-American Activities Committee. A screenwriter during the 1930s and ’40s, he had been involved with the Communist Party in the 1930s and refused to name names at his first HUAC appearance. Ultimately he changed his mind and identified friends and colleagues as party members. Similarly, Felson sells his soul and betrays the one person who really knows and loves him in a Faustian pact to gain character.

Film and theatre historian Ethan Mordden has identified The Hustler as one of a handful of films from the early 1960s that re-defined the relationship of films to their audiences. This new relationship, he writes, is “one of challenge rather than flattery, of doubt rather than certainty.” No film of the 1950s, Mordden asserts, “took such a brutal, clear look at the ego-affirmation of the one-on-one contest, at the inhumanity of the winner or the castrated vulnerability of the loser.”

Although some have suggested the resemblance of this film to classic film noir, Mordden rejects the comparison based on Rossen’s ultra-realistic style, also noting that the film lacks noir’s “Treacherous Woman or its relish in discovering crime among the bourgeoisie, hungry bank clerks and lusty wives.” Mordden does note that while Fast Eddie “has a slight fifties ring”, the character “makes a decisive break with the extraordinarily feeling tough guys of the ‘rebel’ era … [b]ut he does end up seeking out his emotions” and telling Bert that he is a loser because he’s dead inside.

Directed by: Robert Rossen
Starring: Paul Newman, Jackie Gleason, Piper Laurie, George C. Scott, Myron McCormick, Murray Hamilton, Michael Constantine. Stefan Gierasch, Jake LaMotta, Clifford A. Pellow
Screenplay by: Sidney Carroll, Robert Rossen
Production Design by: Harry Horner
Cinematography by: Eugen Schüfftan
Film Editing by: Dede Allen
Costume Design by: Ruth Morley
Set Decoration by: Gene Callahan
Music by: Kenyon Hopkins
Distributed by: 20th Century Fox
Release Date: September 25, 1961