ది స్టింగ్

The Sting is a 1973 American caper film set in September 1936, involving a complicated plot by two professional grifters (Paul Newman and Robert Redford) to con a mob boss (Robert Shaw). The film was directed by George Roy Hill, who had directed Newman and Redford in the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. Created by screenwriter David S. Ward, the story was inspired by real-life cons perpetrated by brothers Fred and Charley Gondorff and documented by David Maurer in his 1940 book The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man.

The "sting" is the moment when a con artist finishes the "play" and takes the mark's money. If a con is successful, the mark does not realize he has been cheated until the con men are long gone, if at all. The film plays out in distinct sections with old-fashioned title cards drawn by artist Jaroslav "Jerry" Gebr, the lettering and illustrations in a style reminiscent of the Saturday Evening Post. The film is noted for its use of ragtime, particularly the melody "The Entertainer" by Scott Joplin, which was adapted (along with others by Joplin) for the film by Marvin Hamlisch (and a top-ten chart single for Hamlisch when released as a single from the film's soundtrack). The film's success created a resurgence of interest in Joplin's work.

Released on Christmas Day, 1973, The Sting was a massive critical and commercial success and hugely successful at the 46th Academy Awards, nominated for ten Oscars and winning seven, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Writing (Original Screenplay); Redford was also nominated for Best Actor. The film also rekindled Newman's career after a series of big screen flops. Regarded as having one of the best screenplays ever written, The Sting was selected in 2005 for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

కథ
ఈ సినిమా కథ 1930లనాటి చికాగో నగరంలో జరుగుతుంది. ఓ ఇద్దరు చిన్నసైజు దొంగలు. ఒకడు జానీ హుకర్ (రాబర్ట్ రెడ్‌ఫోర్డ్) కాగా రెండోవాడు లూథర్ కోల్‌మన్ (రాబర్ట్ ఎర్ల్ జోన్స్).  లానేగాన్ (రాబర్ట్ షా) అనే మరో డాన్‌కు చేరాల్సిన 5వేల డాలర్ల డబ్బును ఈ ఇద్దరు చిల్లర దొంగలూ ఓ పల్లెటూరిలో చేజిక్కించుకుంటారు. వాటాలు పంచుకొన్న ఆ డబ్బులో తన వాటాను జానీ హుకర్ జూదంలో దాదాపుగా నష్టపోతాడు. ఇక రెండోవాడు అనుకోకుండా లానేగాన్ ముఠా మనుష్యుల చేతిలో హతుడవుతాడు. ఇక తననూ వాళ్లు చంపేస్తారన్న భయంతో హుకర్, ఆ పల్లెటూరును వదిలి చికాగో నగరం చేరతాడు. అక్కడ అతనికి హెన్రీ గాడార్ఫ్ (పాల్ న్యూమన్) పరిచయం అవుతాడు. ఇతనో పెద్ద మోసకారి. తన మిత్రుడిని చంపిన లానేగాన్‌పై కక్ష తీర్చుకోవటానికి అనువైన పథకాన్ని రచించాల్సిందిగా హుకర్, గాడార్ఫ్‌ను కోరతాడు. దాంతో గాడార్ఫ్ ఓ ఫేక్ బెట్టింగ్ షాప్ (ఉత్తుత్తి జూదశాల) పెట్టించి, అందులోకి డబ్బుపై దురాశతో లానేగాన్ వచ్చేలా చేస్తాడు. ఇలా వచ్చిన లానేగాన్‌ను హుకర్ చంపేసే వీలుంటుంది. కానీ... గాడార్ఫ్ అటు లానేగాన్‌తోనూ లాలూచీ అయ్యాడన్న సంగతి హుకర్‌కు తెలుస్తుంది. దాంతో అసలు పథకం మొత్తానికే మోసం వస్తుంది.

Cast

Production

Writing
Screenwriter David S. Ward has said in an interviews that he was inspired to write The Sting while researching pickpockets: "Since I had never seen a film about a confidence man before, I said I gotta do this." Daniel Eagan said: "One key to plots about con men is that film goers want to feel they are in on the trick. They don't have to know how a scheme works, and they don't mind a twist or two, but it's important for the story to feature clearly recognizable 'good' and 'bad' characters." It took a year for Ward to correctly adjust this aspect of the script and to figure out how much information he could keep from the audience while still making the leads sympathetic. He also imagined an underground brotherhood of thieves who assemble for a big operation and then melt away afterward.

Years later, director Rob Cohen recounted how he found the script in the slush pile when working as a reader for Mike Medavoy, a future studio head, but then an agent. He wrote in his coverage that it was "the great American screenplay and … will make an award-winning, major-cast, major-director film." Medavoy said that he would try to sell it on that recommendation, promising to fire Cohen if he could not. Universal bought it that afternoon, and Cohen keeps the coverage framed on the wall of his office.

Academic David Maurer sued for plagiarism, claiming the screenplay was based too heavily on his 1940 book The Big Con, about real-life tricksters Fred and Charley Gondorff. Universal settled out of court for $600,000, irking Ward, who resented the presumption of guilt implied by an out-of-court settlement done for business expediency.

Writer/producer Roy Huggins maintained in his Archive of American Television interview that the first half of The Sting plagiarized the 1958 Maverick television series episode "Shady Deal at Sunny Acres", starring James Garner and Jack Kelly.

Casting

Jack Nicholson was offered the lead role but turned it down.

Newman signed on the film after the producers agreed to give him top billing, $500,000 and a percentage of the profits. His previous five films had been box-office disappointments.

In her 1991 autobiography You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, producer Julia Phillips writes that Hill wanted Richard Boone to play Lonnegan. Much to her relief, Newman had sent the script to Robert Shaw while shooting The Mackintosh Man in Ireland to ensure his participation in the film. Phillips's book asserts that Shaw was not nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award because he demanded that his name follow those of Newman and Redford before the film's opening title.

Shaw's character's limp in the film was authentic. Shaw had injured his leg while playing handball shortly before filming began. Director Hill encouraged him to incorporate the limp into his character rather than withdraw from the project.

Principal photography
Hill wanted the film to be reminiscent of movies from the 1930s and watched films from that decade for inspiration. He noticed that most '30s gangster films had no extras. "For instance", Andrew Horton's book The Films of George Roy Hill quotes Hill as saying, "no extras would be used in street scenes in those films: Jimmy Cagney would be shot down and die in an empty street. So I deliberately avoided using extras."

Along with art director Henry Bumstead and cinematographer Robert L. Surtees, Hill devised a color scheme of muted browns and maroons for the film and a lighting design that combined old-fashioned 1930s-style lighting with some modern tricks of the trade to get the visual look he wanted. Edith Head designed a wardrobe of snappy period costumes for the cast, and artist Jaroslav Gebr created inter-title cards to be used to introduce each section of the film that were reminiscent of the golden glow of old Saturday Evening Post illustrations, a popular publication of the 1930s.

The movie was filmed on the Universal Studios backlot, with a few small scenes shot in Wheeling, West Virginia, some scenes filmed at the Santa Monica pier's carousel, in Southern California, and in Chicago at Union Station and the former LaSalle Street Station. An antique car buff, co-producer Tony Bill helped round up several period cars to use in The Sting. One of them was his own 1935 Pierce-Arrow limousine, which served as Lonnegan's private car.

Reception

Box office 
The film was a box-office smash in 1973 and early 1974, taking in over $160 million.  it is the 20th highest-grossing film in the United States adjusted for ticket price inflation.

Critical response 
Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and called it "one of the most stylish movies of the year". Gene Siskel awarded three-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it "a movie movie that has obviously been made with loving care each and every step of the way." Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the film was "so good-natured, so obviously aware of everything it's up to, even its own picturesque frauds, that I opt to go along with it. One forgives its unrelenting efforts to charm, if only because The Sting itself is a kind of con game, devoid of the poetic aspirations that weighed down Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid." Variety wrote, "George Roy Hill's outstanding direction of David S. Ward's finely-crafted story of multiple deception and surprise ending will delight both mass and class audiences. Extremely handsome production values and a great supporting cast round out the virtues." Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "an unalloyed delight, the kind of pure entertainment film that's all the more welcome for having become such a rarity." John Simon wrote that The Sting as a comedy-thriller "works endearingly without a hitch".

Pauline Kael of The New Yorker was less enthusiastic, writing that the film "is meant to be roguishly charming entertainment, and that's how most of the audience takes it, but I found it visually claustrophobic, and totally mechanical. It creeps cranking on, section after section, and it doesn't have a good spirit." She also wrote, "the absence of women really is felt as a lack in this movie."

In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The Writers Guild of America ranked the screenplay #39 on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written. On Rotten Tomatoes, The Sting holds a rating of 92% from 101 reviews, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and director George Roy Hill prove that charm, humor, and a few slick twists can add up to a great film." On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

పురస్కారాలు, ప్రతిపాదనలు

Adaptations

Stage
Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis (music and lyrics), writer Bob Martin, and director John Rando created a stage musical version of the movie. The musical premiered at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey on March 29, 2018. Henry Gondorff was played by Harry Connick Jr., with choreography by Warren Carlyle. The stage musical incorporates Joplin's music, including "The Entertainer".

Novelization
Robert Weverka adapted the film into a full-length novel, The Sting (1974), based on the screenplay by David S. Ward.

Home media
The movie was issued on DVD by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment in 2000. "If Paul Newman really does retire, he can spend his rocking chair years feeling smug about this," enthused OK! "The story's not the important thing: what makes it are the quirky soundtrack, the card-sharp dialogue and two superduperstars at their superduperstarriest."

A deluxe DVD – The Sting: Special Edition (part of the Universal Legacy Series) – was released in September 2005. Its "making of" featurette, The Art of the Sting, included interviews with cast and crew.

The film was released on Blu-ray in 2012 as part of Universal's 100th anniversary releases.

The Sting was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on May 18, 2021.

See also 
 List of American films of 1973
 List of highest-grossing films in the United States and Canada
 The Sting II

References

External links

 

అకాడమీ అవార్డు విజేతలు