“When you hustle you keep score real simple. The end of the game you count up your money. That’s how you find out who’s best. That’s the only way.” The lines come from The Hustler (1961) starring Paul Newman, George C. Scott, Piper Laurie and Jackie Gleason. Forget about the divide between red and blue, liberal and conservative, MAGA and woke, Harris and Trump. America’s true division is between Eddie Felson (played by Paul Newman) and Bert Gordon (George C. Scott).
The movie was co-written and directed by Robert Rossen, who had been a member of the Communist Party until he broke with it in 1947. He was initially blacklisted, but then testified behind closed doors and named names. The Hustler was his first, and only, successful film after the blacklist and his testimony. It is a parable of the inextricable links between money, character, success, failure and love. American style.
“YOU OWE ME MONEY!” Bert the professional gambler, backed up by thugs, unforgettably erupts at Eddie, the pool-playing genius, at the end of the movie. Scott roars the last word out as if it were the eternal answer to an eternal question, the alpha and omega of creation itself. And that is what the movie is about: money as a finality. Not as in The Color of Money — the trite title of Martin Scorsese’s disappointing sequel. Rather, money as ontological essence; money as, to borrow Spinoza’s characterisation of it, “the abstract of everything”. Money as the consummate medium for the human desire to possess.
Eddie “Fast Eddie” Felson is a young, uncannily gifted pool player. But he’s also a pool hustler. He enriches himself by tricking other players into thinking he’s not that good. He gets them to place high bets in the expectation they will beat him, and then relieves them of their money once he’s taken them in.
Eddie, though, has his hamartia, his tragic flaw. He travels all the way from California to New York — from the kingdom of illusions to the city of grimy reality — accompanied by his shill, a middle-aged sad-sack named Charlie, to play Minnesota Fats, performed to perfection by Jackie Gleason. After playing the legendary Fats, considered the best pool player in the world, for hours in Ames, the pool room that is Fats’s domain, Eddie trounces him. He wins $10,000 — the equivalent of over $100,000 today. Charlie tells him it’s time to leave. Eddie refuses. “The pool game is over when Fats says it’s over,” Eddie snaps. Fats waits, uncertain whether the match will continue. Bert, clearly Fats’s backer and handler, has quietly seated himself in the pool room, in a chair slightly higher than the others. He says to Fats: “Stay with this kid, he’s a loser.”
Eddie doesn’t care about the money. In that sense, he is what an American is supposed to be, from the Western sheriff, to the outsider-hero private eye or cop, to Superman and Batman. He cares about being true to himself. So he looks at Bert with pain and surprise when Bert makes his comment. They continue to play and Fats ends up destroying him. Eddie is left with nothing. Wildly drunk at this point, he stumbles toward Fats with a few crumpled $100 bills and begs Fats to keep playing. Money is still the medium of his pride. Fats declines. Eddie falls to the ground, and the poolroom clears out. Bert departs, shaking his head.
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SubscribeHuh? THE HUSTLER as metaphor? ‘Fraid not, cuz. This long-winded soliloquy makes about as much sense as a speech by Kamala.
Tevis was a great storyteller. This essay manages to confabulate Karl Marx with the poolhall and displays the ability of literary ‘criticism’ to meander and become a crock of shit. A word salad worthy of Kamala Harris, indeed.
M. Robert Weiss, MD
Salads can be good for you and besides a bit of confabulation is just another way of describing thinking in a way that simple abuse is not..
The Color of Money was doomed to be disappointing the moment Cruise signed on. He’s surely the worst ever big name actor (assuming you call striking poses acting).
Born on the 4th of July and Magnolia are clear evidence to the contrary.
That’s a tour de force. Great piece. Love it.
Yeah, I really enjoyed that essay. And The Hustler is one of the all time great movies.
This was something to think about and yep, there are hustles to be seen here.
Makes me want to watch the film with fresh eyes. Still 80% of Americans live in squalor or are one event away from being financially broken. So which hustler is really fixing that? Maybe it would’ve been nice not to have gotten so far away from Marxism.
*I misread your comment —with its “not to have gotten” construction—to mean that you thought we were living in a Marxist system. I agree with you to the extent that I think we could have a much more robust safety net, with fewer loopholes and free rides for corporations and the ultra-wealthy, without steeping anywhere close to excessive collectivism. There is no such thing as pure “ism” anywhere in the real world—not capitalism or socialism—and a sensible balance is needed. We’re too close to corporatocracy at present.
The great morality play that would be the fall election lacks a saint. No one has ever suggested that fits the description and no amount of hagiography can ever make Harris worthy. We’re left with a person who genuinely loves the country and one who wants to continue the fundamental transformation that another hustler started years back.
Some interesting reflections that become too self-enchanted, contorting near the end to fit some b-movie version of the 2024 race.
Who was Bert again? I lost track
As an admirer of Walter Tevis and having a weakness for older B & W movies, it’s nice to see this story taken seriously. But, yeah, the analysis is a little too clever. And the concluding suggestion that there is now or ever could be a saint headlining one of our political parties is either too subtly ironic for me… or just plain dumb.
I prefer Sherlock Holmes, played by Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce. This series of fine films has never been equaled or surpassed.
I kept reading and reading hoping there’d be some interesting analysis and commentary but it seems as if a good two-thirds of this 8 minute article is just synopsis.