Delightful trickster
K.S. RAJAGOPAL
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The Sting is remembered for Paul Newman’s roguish charm and the Chicago of the Depression era.
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A celebration of violence: Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.
The passing away of Paul Newman triggers memories of The Sting (1973), in which he shares screen space with Robert Redford. Set in the 1930s depression era Chicago, the movie tells the tale of an elaborate confidence trick played by Henry Gondorff
(Paul Newman) and Johnny Hooker (Redford) on a crime syndicate boss Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw).
For Hooker, it is an opportunity to take revenge on Lonnegan who, notorious for his ruthlessness in eliminating those who cross his path, has had Hooker’s friend Luther Coleman (Robert Earl Jones) killed. Hooker is a small time con man who now teams up with a sympathetic Gondorff, who is a notorious Chicago confidence trickster.
For Gondorff, who is on the run from the FBI, it is an opportunity to make some money to bail him out of the bad times he is in. The plot of the movie, though a trifle complicated, is made easy to follow by the way the episodes are sequenced, with subtitles for consecutive parts: ‘The Setup,’ ‘The Hook’, ‘The Tale’ and finally, ‘The Sting.’
The denouement
The denouement in the last episode, set in a bogus off-track betting saloon first leaves the viewer in a state of stunned disbelief for just a few seconds, until it is realised that like the villain in the movie, Lonnegan, the viewer has been ‘taken’ and the final scene as it unfolds and the truth unravels, is a delight to behold.
The movie is notable, first of all, for Paul Newman who is all roguish charm in his portrayal of the boozy, wisecracking Gondorff, and then, for the meticulously crafted Depression-era urban Chicago ambience — complete with ramshackle wooden buildings, grime and dust, quaint tramcars, vintage automobiles and men with bowler hats dressed in baggy pin-striped trousers held up by suspenders.
The sequences are set to delightful ragtime jazz piano music composed by Scott Joplin and adapted by Marvin Hamlisch. The film was a major box office success in 1973, taking in more than U.S. $160 millions. It won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture and Best Director.
Contrast this movie with the western ‘Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid’ directed by the same director (George Roy Hill) and starring the same twosome (Newman and Redford) and one realises that the latter is more a celebration of machismo and violence of the wild west, while ‘The Sting’ is a truly cerebral motion picture, a celebration of the fine art of deception — The big con — sans guns, sans violence. After all, all it takes is a little confidence!
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