The Hustler

Director: Robert Rossen

1961 / 134min / DCP

Paul Newman has one of the defining roles of his storied career as “Fast” Eddie Felson, a wandering pool shark who makes a living out of hustling suckers across the Midwest—until, that is, he gets a taste of his own medicine courtesy of Jackie Gleason’s Minnesota Fats. Cinematographer Eugene Schüfftan, shooting in black-and-white Cinemascope, invests the nocturnal, urban world of the film with a grimy glamor, and legendary editor Dede Allen gives the billiard sequences snap and rigor.