THE HUSTLER
1961,
20th Century Fox,
135 min,
USA,
Dir: Robert Rossen
Paul Newman is unforgettable as pool shark Eddie Felson, who shakes his loser persona when heartless gambler George C. Scott teaches him the psychology of winning. Eddie realizes too late that obsessive victory over the unbeatable Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) is empty, since the cost is the destruction of his crippled alcoholic lover (Piper Laurie), in this intense, back-alley poem by director Robert Rossen.