Eddi Felson`s Learning Years

Rating: 10/10 (17 February 2002)

Viewing this film on video fifteen years after first seeing it on TV and its becoming a milestone on my way into adult life, I can´t but have understanding for disappointed viewers deriding it as dated, the acting being strident und strenuous - but it really is none of that! We are talking here about a true "Bildungsfilm", and Paul Newman`s arguably overacted moods (the nervous grinning, the outbursts of anger) are not the actor´s fault, but Eddie Felson`s - an adolescent thirty-something in search of character (i.e. of himself), which he eventually finds only after paying a huge price for it.
If the purpose of art is the pursuit of truth, i.e. the attempt to overcome the absurdity of life in order to "explain" it, "The Hustler" can only be considered a masterpiece.