The Hustler (1961 film): While it might have been wonderful 70 years ago, it's not so great now

I probably wouldn't have bothered to watch this at all had it not been for the delight I experienced when watching "The Color of Money" starring Tom Cruise and Paul Newman a few days ago. I kind of had an idea that this was a sequel of sorts based on a much older film, but I didn't realize that it had a legendary status as a film.

So I went back and watched it and I have to say, I was kind of bored throughout almost the entire film. There's only so much you can do with film in that day and time and I guess they did the best they could. There were many differences between this film and its sequel and not really in a good way.

For a lot of people, Paul Newman is a guy whose face comes on packets of salad dressing and yes, he really did develop that. For others, he is a guy that you have heard about but don't really know a lot about him. I was not alive during his heyday but I am aware of the fact that he is a Hollywood legend. During the time that this film was made, he was a top star and it was a big deal to have him starring opposite Jackie Gleeson, who is mostly known for being a comedian.

At face value, this movie is just about someone being really good at pool and he eventually refines his hustling skills at pool halls around the US. It is about a lot more than that though as it explores humility, compassion, and even a bit of people struggling to not be sociopaths as "Fast Eddie" has some internal struggles about duping people out of money that don't have a lot of money to give. This same crisis of conscious is shown in Tom Cruise's "Vince" in The Color of Money. I think this is something that most people can related to, the empathy towards people that are less fortunate than we are and "Fast Eddie" quickly becomes immune to this as the need dictates.

One thing I found very interesting about this film was that the rules of standard or "straight" pool must have been very different back in the 60's. For one thing the initial rack was sometimes different with the lead ball being placed next to the main rack. Also, the person on the break would frequently just barely touch the racked balls rather than spreading them out all over the table in a sort of "snooker" fashion. They also would play through the 8-ball, or even use the opposing guy's balls in order to set up a combo sinking their own ball. None of these things happen in modern-bay pool.

One thing that disappointed but didn't surprise me is that a lot of the shots, most of them actually, aren't actually being completed by the actors themselves. I am sure this was done to save time because Jackie Gleeson and Paul Newman aren't actually expert pool players, they are actors. We also didn't have almost any camera tricks back in the 60's so expecting these two to both act, and make damn near impossible shots, would have taken years to film and would have frustrated everyone involved.

Should I watch it?

I think that for most modern audiences this is going to be a snooze-fest. Like many films from pre 1970 or so, things have changed so much since those times that it can prove very difficult to hold the attention of modern audiences. The acting was good for the time, but even the notion of that can evolve over time and for me, I thought that the acting was decent, but nothing worth getting super excited over. The film moves rather slowly and only about 3 major things actually ever happen during the around 2 hours of runtime.

This is a piece of cinematic history, and was extremely well-received when it was released and it was nominated for a bunch of Academy Awards and won 2 of them. Something I have never seen before is one of the actors in the film refused his Academy Award nomination for some reason. It tripled its budget and this was considered and extremely good success at the time. I suppose it would be now as well even though the total box office was under $10 million at the time.

I think that if you want to experience what was considered legendary storytelling in 1961 that you might be better off just watching some YouTube highlights rather than sitting down for the entire film. I got bored and I have more patience that most people when it comes to watching movies.