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Movie Review: The Hustler (1961) and The Cincinnati Kid (1965) [1]
['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']
Date: 2023-09-09
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SPOILER ALERT!
I was in a pool hall one day when I overheard someone saying to the guy he just beat, “You’re good, kid, but as long as I’m around, you’re second best.”
That line is from The Cincinnati Kid (1965), which is not a movie about pool like The Hustler (1961), but rather about poker. Of course, a line like that could be used in any game, so there was nothing out of place about its being used for fun in a pool hall. On the other hand, there are a lot of similarities between those two movies, which is why a line from the movie about poker might suggest itself as usable in a game of pool.
Both movies begin with the title character eking out a living by playing against amateurs, something that can be fraught with danger when those amateurs believe they have been cheated, in the case of poker, or hustled, in the case of pool. But eventually, the title characters get a chance to play in the big time, against a renowned champion.
In The Hustler, the contender comes to the champion: “Fast Eddie” Felson (Paul Newman) arrives at the favorite pool hall of Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) in order to challenge him to a game of pool. In The Cincinnati Kid, the champion comes to the contender: Lancey Howard (Edward G. Robinson) arrives in New Orleans, where the Kid (Steve McQueen) finally gets a chance to go up against him in a game of five-card stud.
In The Hustler, it is the champion that has the name of a place as part of his nickname; in The Cincinnati Kid, it is the contender that has the name of a place as part of his nickname.
In The Hustler, Bert Gordon (George C. Scott) is a rich man who backs Minnesota Fats, the champion, against Eddie, the contender; in The Cincinnati Kid, Mr. Slade (Rip Torn) is a rich man who backs the Kid, the contender, against Lancey Howard, the champion. In both cases, the rich man is unlikable and unscrupulous.
There is a scene in The Hustler where Eddie loses at poker, and Bert tells him that poker is not his game; in The Cincinnati Kid, when the Kid goes into a pool hall, and someone asks him if he wants to play, he says pool is not his game.
In The Hustler, when Eddie keeps beating Minnesota Fats in their first match, Bert is called in for support. He watches for a while as Eddie keeps winning, bragging that he is the best there is. Finally, Bert says to Fats, “Stay with this kid. He’s a loser.” In The Cincinnati Kid, “Shooter” (Karl Malden) is a dealer, whose wife, Melba (Ann-Margret), says he is a loser.
Another way to say someone is a winner or a loser is to say he is lucky or unlucky. During a game in The Cincinnati Kid, one player loses to Lancey Howard. After he leaves the table, Howard says, “Not very lucky, is he?” The Kid replies, “He never has been.”
To say someone is a loser or that he is unlucky is not merely to say that he loses a lot, which might be due to a lack of skill or mere chance. Rather, it is to assert an essential feature of that man’s character, which no amount of skill or chance can overcome.
The loser quality of Shooter is associated with playing the percentages. He tells the Kid that he used to think he was good enough to beat Lancey Howard, but Howard “gutted” him. Now he just makes a living in small games, playing the percentages. In The Hustler, at the end of the movie, Eddie comes back to make a final play against Fats. After breaking the rack, Eddie looks at the arrangement of the billiard balls on the table. He says, “How should I play that one, Bert? Play it safe? You always told me to play the percentage. Well, here we go, fast and loose.” This time Eddie wins.
There is another character in The Cincinnati Kid, a Doc Sokal (Milton Selzer), who really plays the percentages, so much so that he has a book at his side, in which he writes calculations as he plays the hands. He has it all figured out except for one problem: none of the others at the table play the way his book says they should, causing him to become so exasperated that he quits.
In The Hustler, after Eddie loses to Fats in their first encounter, Bert later tells him that what beat him was character. After Eddie’s girlfriend, Sarah (Piper Laurie), commits suicide, he eventually returns to the pool hall for the final match. While making one good shot after another, he continues the conversation referred to above:
Percentage players die broke, too, don’t they, Bert? ’Cause you were right, Bert. It’s not enough to have talent. You got to have character, too. Yeah, I sure got character now. I got it in a hotel room in Louisville.
Fats finally gives up, telling Eddie he can’t beat him. So, Eddie wins the game after losing the girl. In The Cincinnati Kid, we have the opposite ending: the Kid gets the girl after losing the game.
Now, it’s understandable that, for dramatic purposes, the man that plays the percentages cannot win in the end. Imagine Eddie saying to Bert, “I know you believe in playing fast and loose, but I’m going to play it safe, according to the percentages,” after which he wins the game. Or imagine Doc Sokal, as a result of all the calculations he makes in his book, wins more often than he loses, slowly depleting the Kid and Lancey Howard of funds until they don’t have any money left. Those outcomes would have been realistic. After all, isn’t that how bookmakers and casinos make a profit, by playing the percentages?
And yet, we would not like such a movie. While allowing there is a place for calculations and percentages (we even see the Kid reviewing the percentages before the game), we want the winner to have some ineffable quality of the human spirit that allows him to triumph over calculations that a computer might make. Of course, that is exactly what a lot of people believe about themselves when they play the horses or head for Las Vegas, thinking they have some special quality that will make them the exception.
With this in mind, let us consider a couple of other movies. In The Flight of the Phoenix (1965), James Stewart plays Frank Towns, a pilot in his fifties, who is flying a bunch of men in a small plane across a desert in Africa. Lew Moran (Richard Attenborough), his navigator, worries about a sandstorm heading their way. Frank tells him not to worry about alternates just yet. Lew is also worried about what management will think if they do not take advantage of an alternate to avoid the storm. Frank dismisses his concerns and reminisces about the good old days of flying:
A pilot is supposed to use his own judgement, don't you think? Gee, if it weren't for that.... I don't know, Lew.... I suppose pilots are just as good now as they ever were, but they sure don't live the way we did. Well, I can tell you that there were times when you took real pride in just getting there. Flying used to be fun. It really did, Lew. It used to be fun.
The “judgment” Frank is referring to is the ability to come to the right decision when adhering strictly to the rules may not produce the best outcome.
The point about an alternate becomes moot when the storm cuts off that option. The plane finally makes a crash landing, and it appears they will all end up dying of thirst before anyone is able to rescue them. In the log, Frank starts to make excuses, but eventually writes “Pilot error.” In other words, poor judgment.
Fortunately, one of the passengers is Heinrich Dorfmann (Hardy Krüger), an engineer who designs airplanes. He realizes that they have the ability to build a smaller plane out of the wreckage and fly it out of the desert.
But Frank thinks the idea is ridiculous. We are used to James Stewart being a paragon of common sense in the movies, but every objection he comes up with is refuted by Dorfmann. Eventually, he becomes resigned to letting Dorfmann have his way. As Frank watches Dorfmann work, he thinks about how men like Dorfmann will replace men like Frank, even though he still thinks Dorfmann’s plan will fail, that they will all die of thirst in the end:
He’s right about one thing, though. The little men with the slide rules and computers are going to inherit the Earth. And it’s kind of sad that Dorfmann won’t be there to see it. But then, I guess he doesn't need to see it. He already knows it.
The plane gets built, but the engine won’t start. Refusing to follow Dorfmann’s explicit instructions, Frank uses one of the cartridges to clean out the starter, which is just what is needed to start the engine. They are able to fly to safety. Through the right combination of engineering calculations on Dorfmann’s part and judgment based on experience on Frank’s part, the movie recognizes the contributions of both men.
A similar conflict is the basis for a subplot in The Prize (1963). Two men, Dr. John Garrett (Kevin McCarthy) and Dr. Carlo Farelli (Sergio Fantoni), are to share the Nobel prize in medicine in the field of heart transplants. Garrett is convinced that Farelli stole his research and thus does not deserve half the prize. During an interview, Farelli says that the two of them were independently using the same method to get to the same result. Garrett replies, with bitter sarcasm:
Dr. Farelli is too kind when he gives me credit for using his methods. I crawled from A to B to C while he was leapfrogging from A to Z without making a single experiment in between.
The implication is that Farelli was able to do this by stealing Garrett’s work. Farelli replies good naturedly: “Well, in Rome one does as the Romans do. Improvise.”
Farelli indicates that his ability to improvise goes with his being Italian, an ethnic group that movies often portray as passionate, relying on inspiration rather than the plodding, careful methods of the Anglo-Saxon that Garrett appears to be. There is a different ethnic contrast in Flight of the Phoenix, where Dorfmann is a German, a race associated with engineering proficiency, while Frank is an American with Yankee ingenuity.
Toward the end of The Prize, Dr. Max Stratman (Edward G. Robinson), a central character in the main plot of this movie, has a heart attack and collapses. Farelli comes to his aid, but quickly begs for Garrett to assist him. Garrett gives his diagnosis, and they consider their limited options, but finally Farelli uses open wires from an electrical outlet as a defibrillator. When Stratman is revived, Farelli says to Garrett, “We did it, Dr. Garrett, we did it!” Garrett replies, “You did it,” now acknowledging Farelli’s brilliance as a doctor. Once again, there is a concession to both ways of doing things.
And so, on the one hand we have the constellation of calculation, consisting of rules, method, and percentages; while on the other hand we have the constellation of character, consisting of inspiration, improvisation, and judgment. In The Hustler, Eddie wins the final match through a combination of talent and character; in the case of The Cincinnati Kid, however, the movie is unbalanced, coming down too heavily in favor of the latter.
I never played much poker, so I can hardly claim to be an expert on the subject. However, I think I can say with a fair amount of confidence that in a game of five card stud, with no wild cards, straights and flushes will be rare. Most hands will be won by high cards, pairs, or combinations built on pairs, such as three of a kind, two pairs, a full house, or even four of a kind. The reason is clear: with a pair, one can stay in the pot, and if the pair is improved in some way with a subsequent card, all the better. But the odds are just too great against straights and flushes to stay in until the deal of the fifth card. Given that a pair is incompatible with a straight or a flush, one would have to stay in the hand all the way to the fifth card with no pair at all.
Maybe, if no one is showing a pair, and if the betting is not too steep, one might stay in the pot long enough to make that straight or that flush. Otherwise, trying for such hands would be a fool’s play. For that reason, throughout the movie, before we get to the end, all the hands are won by high cards or pair-based combinations with just one exception, a flush made by someone with little fanfare, presumably to let us know such things do happen once in a while.
On the final hand, the Kid is dealt a hole card and the 10 of clubs; Lancey Howard, a hole card and the 8 of diamonds. The 10 is high, so the Kid bets $500, and Howard matches it. Then the Kid is dealt another 10, giving him a pair; Howard, the queen of diamonds. The Kid bets $1,000. Howard sees that and raises $1,000. At this point, the spectators think he must have a pair of queens, the only reasonable explanation for raising against a pair of 10s. But as we find out later, he does not.
Now, it would be one thing if the betting were not so heavy, and Howard simply put in the same amount the Kid bet. But as just noted, he raises the Kid. At the end of the hand, it turns out that the Kid has aces full, while Howard has a straight flush. (An ordinary straight or flush would not have been enough to beat a full house, so we are talking about ridiculous odds getting to a showdown like this.) Lady Fingers (Joan Blondell), who was dealing the hand, asks Howard with incredulity, “You raised the 10s on a lousy three flush?”
“Gets down to what it’s all about, doesn’t it?” Howard replies, puffing on his cigar. “Making the wrong move at the right time…. Like life, I guess.”
And thus does character completely triumph over calculation.
[END]
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