Friday, August 06, 2010
Thursday night Adriane and I watched Paul Newman in The Hustler, another fine example of a movie I waited far too long to see.
For one thing, it’s lousy with character actors. That’s a young Vincent Gardenia working behind the bar, confirming that, yes, even he was young once. Or younger, anyway. There’s Michael Constantine, briefly. There’s Murray Hamilton, hilarious as an effete Kentucky millionaire. Former middleweight champ Jake LaMotta even turns up as a bartender in one sequence. The standout among them, though, is one Myron McCormick, whom I had never seen in anything before and who was dead of cancer a year later, at 54. With a few movies and a lot of television to his credit, he’s marvelously affecting in the role of Charlie Burns, Fast Eddie Felson’s first handler and business partner. He’s one of those great discoveries: a guy you’ve never seen who’s so good and so real that he could just as easily be some guy they pulled in off the street.
As Minnesota Fats, it’s got Jackie Gleason in what must be his finest, least grating performance ever, the best evidence he could possibly present to defend the sobriquet “The Great One.” (I’ve always been an Art Carney guy myself.) It’s got George C. Scott — typically sharp and menacing and cynical and cool. And it’s got brave Piper Laurie, in exactly the second thing I’ve ever seen her in, with her smoky voice and that awful Aqua Net helmet of hair they made women wear in the late ’50s and early ’60s; somehow, though, she makes us see what Eddie sees in her.
But what The Hustler has most of all is the young Paul Newman. As we watched, I was celebrating my 43rd birthday, and I marveled that Newman then was seven years younger than I am now. Never mind that he aged better than anyone has a right to; then and there, in 1961, he was about as perfect a specimen of a movie star as you could hope to find. His energy and bluster and raw, unchecked bravado brought to mind, obviously, those of his apprentice Tom Cruise in Scorsese’s The Color of Money 25 years later (that being another reason that Thursday’s screening was a necessity). Except that not even Cruise had going for him what the young Newman did; you’re born with that, and Cruise wasn’t.
We were barely a half-hour into the tale of Fast Eddie Felson when Adriane announced, “I think I can’t stand him.”
To which I replied, “It’s early yet, darling. Give him time. That’s why they call it a character arc,” and here I waved my hand in an arc to emphasize my point.
But 20 minutes later Eddie was treating his girl, Sarah, shabbily and with disregard, and again Adriane chimed in: “I really sort of hate him.”
On and on this went, and Adriane did not shrink from her initial assessment of Fast Eddie. She eventually asked, “Do you promise I’m going to like him before this is all over with?” And while I certainly didn’t feel I could make such a promise, I felt entirely confident that my illustration of the character arc would hold true, that before the credits rolled, Eddie Felson would redeem himself somehow. At least I hoped he would, for Adriane’s sake.
For my own edification, I was reminded once more what was so special about Newman. He was genuinely likable, a man’s man who raced cars and gave a ton of money to charity and was married to the same woman for 50 years. He was matter-of-factly handsome and virile without having to force his sex appeal and those clear blue eyes on the moviegoing public, which meant he wasn’t a threat to the rest of us men even though, really, if we’re being completely honest with ourselves, he very much was. And he certainly played his share of characters who were just as likable as he was. (Butch Cassidy, anyone? Rocky Graziano? Henry Gondorff? Cool Hand Luke?)
But what made Newman special was that he defied the humming internal logic of the star-making machinery and went out of his way to cast himself against type. He was willing, in a way few stars are, to tamper with any semblance of a carefully crafted persona, to drag his stardom out on the most precarious of limbs and test our faith in and infatuation with him. He challenged us to see him as an actor, not a sex symbol, and he made us pay attention to the sorts of characters we don’t ordinarily wish upon our movie stars. Flawed, ruined, wounded, complicated men like Ben Quick and Brick Pollitt and Hud Bannon and, ultimately, Frank Galvin and John Rooney and, yes, even Fast Eddie Felson, who could spot an easy mark but was a lousy judge of actual character (his own included), who got way out in front of his talent and chased down his rightful destiny as a loser, who had the big time within his grasp and still wasn’t satisfied with it, who treated his girl badly and turned my own girl against him.
Rare is the star who’ll lean into the strike zone and take that one on the chin. That’s OK, though. Newman will win her back next time. He always does.
