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The precursor is Wise's The Set-Up, the update takes note of Beat disaffection and Nouvelle Vague frankness. Poolroom arenas, a church to some and to others a mortuary, "those tables are the slabs they lay the stiffs on." "Fastest and the bestest," Fast Eddie (Paul Newman) at work on gamblers fooled by his blowhard cover. Loneliness and codependency are the two sides of the coin, his soulmate (Piper Laurie) might be Jeanne Moreau at the bus terminal—aging coed, aspiring writer, "not drunk, lame" but also drunk, "the emancipated type" with a Biblical name. (She recoils from their first kiss, "too hungry.") Their bond can't possibly compete with a match against the famed Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason), the manager (George C. Scott) is Mephistopheles in shades. "Don't play it small... It doesn't look good on you." The Robert Rossen brooder par excellence, rolling across the billiards rectangle of the CinemaScope screen. The game and the Kabuki rituals that come with it, the somber doffing of jackets and powdering of hands that precede the wielding of sticks, metaphysical spaces equipped with dingy lights and spilled drinks. (The pool cue demands its own mystique, "a piece of wood with nerves.") The protagonist loses his camouflage for a showy moment and takes his punishment behind the frosted window of a bathroom, his shattered thumbs heal under the care of the lush with whom he shares "a contract of depravity." Talent and character, a simple score, the remains of Forties noir congealing into Sixties existentialism in Newman's bright yet hooded gaze. The resolution is a bitter victory in the realm of dead lovers and fallen champions, not for nothing does Rossen keep a withered Jake LaMotta in the wings. "Is that what makes a winner?" Scorsese has the official sequel, but this is a film for Altman and Hellman and Mann. Cinematography by Eugen Schüfftan. With Myron McCormick, Murray Hamilton, Michael Constantine, Stefan Gierasch, and Vincent Gardenia. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |