Fascinating Introspection into the concepts of Winning and Losing ...

Rating: 10/10 (12 January 2011)

"Eddie, you're a born loser", these five words still resonate in my mind, while I remember the conversation between "Fast" Eddie Felson, Paul Newman's greatest and most fascinating role, and Bert Gordon, masterfully played by George C. Scott.
Eddie is a hustler who uses his talent in pool for money, and he's ambitious enough to challenge the living Gods of the green table during high-stakes matches. His boyish smile and way of talk creates the perfect harmony between arrogance and vulnerability, both inspiring fear and sympathy, anything but suspicion. Paul Newman makes his role so believable that in no way, one can guess he's a hustler, which makes him a pretty good one. So Eddie makes money to challenge the big ones and when it comes to play the game for real, he believes in one thing : winning, and winning big time. So does Bert, a businessman, who believes in one and only one sacred principle : whatever you do, never lose your money. And this is what the whole movie is about, winning and losing.
Watching "The Hustler" is like an introspection into the whole concept of a game. What's the purpose of a game ? For the common majority, we play, we might lose or win, but we're entertaining ourselves and having fun. But for a small minority, there's no fun, no entertainment except if this leads to one thing : winning. Eddie belongs to this minority, and not only does he believe in winning, but it must follow the opponent's rules. It's over if the opponent says so. Winning doesn't count, it's the way you win. A winner has an attitude, he just doesn't win. For one thing, it's hard for us to disagree, since we don't know many lame winners, they all have this little something inspiring our fascination, our disdain but never our indifference. Eddie can't afford the attitude of the winner because as a potential winner he might be, he still carries the attitude of the loser, who's unconsciously always looking for an excuse. It's less the attitude of a loser than the attitude of the winner who wants to win so bad whatever he does, he loses. What Bert calls 'character' is attitude without efficiency. Eddie still has to learn from Minnesota Fats who plays and wins in a cool, detached elegance beautifully embodied by Jackie Gleason like a tailor-made tuxedo.
There's indeed a gracious coolness in Fats's attitude : whatever Eddie lacks, Fats probably incarnates it. It must be the wisdom, the capability of knowing when to stop. The passion, the ferocious desire to win consumes Eddie's mind so much, he can't even realize when he's losing. Gordon notices that, and uses a provocative approach to tempt Eddie to work for him to get rid of this inner enemy, this 'character' in order to challenge Fats again, and win this time. But this character is something much deeper, transcending the context of the game. It's a blinding passion and egomania, making Eddie an eternally unsatisfied man, incapable of seeing happiness when it crosses his road. This is Eddie's tragedy.
And this tragedy is incarnated by one character. Sarah Packard, played by Piper Laurie. Sarah is like a talentless Eddie's alter ego, a woman spending her life pretending to study, to be what she is not, filling the emptiness of her life as she fills a glass with alcohol. Alcohol fills her life, gives it a taste, makes her forget that she doesn't have anything else to do. Alcohol acts on her like pool on Eddie, with the same burning power, and that's why they understand each other, why their romance seem so realistic and natural. But I'm a bit unfair towards Sarah, she does have a talent that Eddie lacks : she knows what love is. She knows she loves Eddie who's too blinded by his ego to realize it, and when he does, it's too late. Seeing Eddie dealing with this relationship with the same ego than he does for pool, makes you realize how the old Bert was right. And the "born loser" statement sounds like the premise of a tragedy. Losing a game is one thing, losing the woman of your life is another.
The love story between Eddie and Sarah is the soul of "The Hustler" and the tragedy in which Bert played a significant part, a heart-breaking conclusion. Bert believed in winning money, Eddie in winning a game, Sarah in winning by not losing the most precious things. And she's the one who got the true meaning of the word. If Eddie asked himself only once, what's the most valuable thing for him, and for Bert, maybe the tragedy could have been avoided. Sarah was like Eddie's therapy and so was he. When his thumbs were broken, they ironically became a perfect couple, and you could see Sarah's bitterness when she saw his hands healed. She declares her love but she needs the words but Eddie can't admit loving as much as losing, his character is too strong, and like I said, that's his tragedy.
This is the tragedy of "Fast" Eddie Felson, probably one of the most fascinating character studies ever made with my favorite game as a backdrop. A movie in black and white and a jazzy music, like a paradoxical mix of coolness and darkness, appearance of detachment for dark motives, the typical 'hustler' attitude.