Golpe de Mestre

I agree 100 percent that this is a wonderful movie. I first saw it over 30 years ago, and it remains vivid in my mind while I can't remember zip about movies I saw last week which others have praised and I found wanting. I can't think of another film about double and triple crosses that deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence with "The Sting" (which doesn't mean that some of the others haven't been good). In addition to all the things that others have praised, one of the most memorable features of this film is the use of a Scott Joplin rag, which both lends a distinctive period touch and adds a sense of fast-paced motion to the action. I'm not much for ranking films -- top five, top ten, top 250 -- but this is one of the best. If you haven't already seen it, drop everything and find the DVD. As pure entertainment, it can't be beat.

The Sting.

The Sting (1973) is one of everybody's favorite films. Director George Roy Hill took a page from his successful western, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, and teamed Paul Newman and Robert Redford once again, this time for an Academy Award four star movie about con men.

The intricate saga of The Sting is set in 1936 Chicago. It tells the story of grifters, Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker, played by Paul Newman and Robert Redford, respectively. They con the bad guy, Doyle Lonnegan, played by Robert Shaw. And at every turn, they con the audience as well.

The poker game is five card draw ('straight poker' in the film) and is set on a train traveling from New York to Chicago. Newman and Redford are on the train along with Shaw. The game has been set up by Shaw with the cooperation of the conductor. We don't know how Newman and Redford know exactly what day and what train Shaw is taking from New York to Chicago, but that is beside the purpose of our discussion. Shaw is a known card cheater, but Newman will prove to be a better one. Once again the holy game of poker will be sullied by the movies. This time, we'll love every minute of it.

Newman arranges to get himself invited to the poker game, through the conductor. He arrives sober, but apparently inebriated. It is the perfect act, consummately played in a boozy, needling performance by Paul Newman.

Shaw's character is a known cold decker (a 'cold deck' is a deck introduced surreptitiously into the game with hands pre-arranged to break one of the players)' and Newman will have to play over the top of the cold deck when it is placed into the game.

One of the subtleties of the event is missed by most viewers. Newman must ready himself to overcome the cold deck. During the play of hands, we see Newman hold the cards close to his vest and, at least once, his cards disappear briefly below table level, out of sight, and back again. Newman knows Shaw cold decks middle cards against low cards, and so Newman is gathering and holding out jacks.

Newman immediately insults Shaw upon arrival and continues to heckle him throughout the play of the game, thus making sure Shaw will cold deck the game to teach the upstart drunk a lesson. When Shaw goes to the men's room to arrange to fix the cold deck, Newman knows the time has come. (In real life, cold decks were nearly always arranged in men's rooms. They should have had a dedicated stall marked 'coolers made here'.)

The game is three handed at this point. Shaw will bring the cold deck in when he cuts the cards for the dealer to his left. In filming the cold decking, the camera shows a pair of hands over the deck, then there's a cut in the continuity. Then the camera goes immediately back to the deck and we see the hands with the warm deck going to a handkerchief in Shaw's lap, leaving the cold deck on the table. I guess it would have been hard to do in one long shot.

The detail is interesting during the dealing of the cold deck. Newman is fussing with his cigar and poking behind his vest, implying something is happening. But we never see Newman with hand positions that could be holding out cards.

Newman is dealt trip threes and Shaw is dealt a pair of nines. The third player is the dealer and he is out of the hand. Newman draws two cards and gets his four threes with the six of hearts. Shaw draws three cards and gets his four nines with the ten of spades.

The planning of the arranged cold deck is well done and probable. After the cards are dealt, the cards on top of the deck are, in order, a three, the six of hearts, two nines and the ten of spades. It doesn't matter whether Newman draws one or two cards, he'll make his four threes and, in either case, Shaw, in drawing three cards, will make his four nines.

Now, here's the unlikely trick. Newman must change the hand with four threes for a hand with four jacks. It would be easiest to hold out an entire hand of four jacks and a fifth card and switch five card hands. But Newman switches only the four threes for the four jacks he's held out and he keeps the six of hearts. That is much harder to do and less likely would be the method chosen. Newman also takes the chance that Shaw won't have one of the legitimate jacks in his hand with the four nines, but in having to play over the top of the cold deck, that gamble is unavoidable.

Shaw's problem is that he can't call Newman for card manipulation because Shaw has an audience, the other players and the conductor. After Newman leaves the cabin, Shaw says to his lackey, 'What was I supposed to do? Call him for cheating better than me, in front of the others?'

Shaw was able to get $10,000 more in chips during a hand in a table stakes game. But that was okay with Newman.

The film shows Shaw wiping his face with a handkerchief during the play of the hand, implying he has disposed of the warm deck. However, we never see Newman clean up. So, when he leaves the poker cabin, one deck is short four jacks, the other deck has four extra jacks, and Newman still has four threes behind his vest somewhere. Whoever the conductor gives the decks to next, will have a few surprises.

Despite its faults, the poker scene from The Sting is the most fun filled, greatest directed, best acted, and most involved offering in cheating poker film history. And it was made over thirty years ago.

Silver Dollar Sam NothingWild.com

A delicious wheeze from start to finish. Certainly a film that leaves you thinking that you'd like to have been in Henry's gang and played a part in separating Lonnegan from his dough. The editing is pin sharp and beautifully cast with a superb musical track to keep you company. The framing, the photography, the pace all dovetail exquisitely and if you feel left outside of the game plan in your first viewing, never fear, the second time of watching, you'll enjoy it just as much but it will mean more. Certainly it's a film you'll want to see a second time. At least. Oscars rightly by the handful and nominations are full deserved to combine for a winning performance by all concerned. Definitely in my top fifty of all time.

The fix is in, the odds are set, and the boys are ready to play for the big time, both on the screen and behind the camera in this breezy, endlessly entertaining movie classic.

Robert Redford is small-time hustler Johnny Hooker, happy to play the marks in Joliet until the murder of his mentor pushes him to go up against the nastiest mug in Chicago, Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw.) Hooker'd rather ice Lonnegan outright, but will settle for a big con with the help of a slightly wobbly but game scammer named Henry Gondorff, played as only Paul Newman can.

Newman and Redford, along with director George Roy Hill, had a lot riding on this pony, given it was a follow-up to their earlier "Butch Cassidy And The Sundance Kid." To measure up, they had to produce nothing short of another classic. And so they did. "The Sting" won the Best Picture Oscar in 1973, and remains the sentimental favorite among many in choosing between the two films.

Comparing "The Sting" to "Butch Cassidy" is kind of overdone sport, and tempers, as Lonnegan would say, run hot. But you can see why "The Sting" worked as well as it did by looking at how the director and the stars played it differently within the same basic framework as "Butch Cassidy." Newman and Redford are again outlaws and underdogs. Period detail abounds here as it did with "Butch Cassidy," and there's another memorable score amid the proceedings, Scott Joplin rags modernized by Marvin Hamlisch. The score even produced another hit, "The Entertainer," to compare with "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head."

What's different about "The Sting," and what makes it such a classic in its own right, is the way the stars service the plot. In "Butch Cassidy," Newman and Redford's comradeship was the story. Here, the chemistry between the two actors is minimized in favor of spinning a yarn with enough red herrings to feed the Swedish navy. The tale here is better than "Butch Cassidy," which is a more elegiac film with grander cinematography and funnier set pieces. "The Sting" is an edge-of-your-seat caper flick from beginning to end.

You can't really call "The Sting" a comedy. Though there are many laughs, especially when Newman hooks Shaw during a poker game, Hill won't let the audience relax enough for that. What this is is a con game, played on the audience, designed not to cheat but entertain by means of clever hoodwinking and constant misdirection plays.

You'll get no spoilers from me. This is one worth sitting through with no expectations. Five gets you ten you'll enjoy Newman and Redford, and a terrific supporting cast (one advantage over "Butch Cassidy") that includes Charles Durning, Eileen Brennan, Dana Elcar, Harold Gould, and Mr. Hand himself, Ray Walston. There's another familiar face from "Butch Cassidy," Charles Dierkop, Flat Nose Curry in "Butch Cassidy" and Lonnegan's right hand here. The best performance may be Robert Shaw's; he exudes menace aplenty but some humanity, too, when he takes Hooker under his wing after learning he came from the same hard streets of Five Points Lonnegan sprang from.

Terrific period detail, too. The dialogue is great and feels real in its Runyonesque way, while the cons are elaborate and logically played out. Watching this a second time is especially fun because once you know how the plot goes down, you find yourself catching clues you missed the first time, and enjoying the film even more for them.

Why didn't Newman and Redford team up again? Certainly there was another good movie for them to partner up in, but as Gondorff would have put it, only chumps don't quit when they're ahead.

A magical plot, dead on art direction, brilliant supporting roles (most notably Robert Shaw, ya falla?), and the guiding hand of Redford/Newman chemistry make this one of the Hollywood's great films. "The Sting" is a hallmark of the "Golden Age" of American film, and has molded not only countless films, but numerous genres, few of which have met the challenge of its master.