The Hustler (1961) | |
Plot Synopsis (continued)
Eddie departs to play pool in Louisville "during Derby week" - and he takes Sarah along. Enroute in the railroad dining-car, Gordon assesses their prey - and Eddie, while Sarah listens warily:
Later, the omniscient, condescending Gordon, a percentage player, re-hashes his lackey's match-up at Ames with Fats:
When they check in to their "two adjoining suites" in their lavish Louisville hotel, with Gordon bankrolling their expensive tabs, Eddie is waylaid and magnetically attracted to the lobby's Billiard Room: "You know, that's real sweet music in there. You can almost smell the action and the money, you know. I can feel it right down at the bottom of my shoes." To keep Gordon out of their room, Sarah shuts one door, and then the other, but she cannot keep the corruptive influences of their manipulative, influential, domineering, swindling manager out of their lives:
The high-stakes billiards game/match with Southern millionaire dandy/aristocrat Findlay (Murray Hamilton) is arranged at the race track - it will commence in the evening at his mansion after the horse races and a cocktail party. According to the sadistic, evil Gordon, who had earlier insulted Sarah as a "wreck" and "a horse that finished last," he intimates that she is a "tramp" - the kind of woman with personal demons that excites him and Findlay:
True to his prediction, Sarah drinks heavily at the mansion party. As she descends - literally - the staircase, the shadows of the ironworks on the balustrade are cast onto her patterned dress (Eddie's one gift to her), trapping her in their swirls. While chatting with an attractive blonde, Eddie ignores her. Noticing her depression and loss of stature, Gordon whispers something dastardly in her ear - she reacts violently by dousing his face with her drink and smashing her cocktail glass on the floor. Having had "a little too much to drink," according to Gordon, Eddie takes her upstairs to sleep it off, where he places her across a bed on which guests' fur wraps are being kept. In Findlay's basement, after removing a cover from the table [lack of continuity: the first shot of the table shows no cover!], Eddie is dismayed that the game will be billiards, not pool, his specialty:
The stakes begin "small" at one hundred dollars a game, with the results remaining "even." When the stakes are raised to five hundred dollars a game, Gordon doubts his pool-shark's willingness to win: "I didn't ask him, 'Can he beat ya?' I already know he can beat ya. I asked him, 'Will he?' To Eddie, that's two different things." Gordon is perched on the sidelines next to a small statue of the devil: "This fellow here bears a striking resemblance to you. It seems as though you might have modeled for the artist." After Eddie has lost two thousand dollars, he begs Bert (who believes he's "still a loser" without self-restraint) to allow him to continue playing: "I can outplay him. I can beat him." Denied support, Eddie must use his own money - funds that he had entrusted to Sarah. He sneaks into the room where she sleeps and steals back the money from her purse - re-enacting Charlie's betrayal of him. In a short time, that additional stake money is depleted and lost too. As he desperately pleads with Gordon for more monetary backing, Sarah descends into the basement and attempts to get Eddie to see what is happening, neutralize the control and power of Gordon, and provide him a means of salvation and new identity, without an existential mask that covers "perverted, twisted, crippled" souls. Blind to her entreaties and believing that she threatens his emotional devotion to the game, Eddie cruelly rejects her because he is too self-absorbed in earning the funds to meet Fats in a comeback - with the single-minded goal of defeating the champion and coveting the title. After witnessing the crumbling of Eddie's troubled relationship with Sarah and her banishment, the morally-bankrupt Gordon decides to restore his backing:
After Sarah has departed, Findlay is soundly defeated and pays up, rendering Gordon twelve thousand in cash, with Eddie's share being three thousand. Rather than sharing a cab ride with Gordon to the hotel, Eddie appears gloomy and walks back alone:
In the Louisville hotel, Gordon bursts into Sarah's adjoining suite and approaches (where she sits on the bed in a dark dress). He blocks her with his dark figure. Cast off by Eddie, she is preparing to leave "in a little while." The detestable manager lies, telling her that Eddie wanted him to pay her off with "some money" and then send her away. He counts out bills for her, implying that she is an additional prize for him to degrade and maul:
After a dissolve (a scene of their sleeping together is implied), she leaves Gordon's bedroom dressed only in a slip - her image is reflected in a bathroom mirror. Following a double betrayal, she scrawls a descriptive, masochistic message in lipstick over her own reflection to condemn her own destructive inner self:
Later, when Eddie walks in to his room, police detectives are questioning Bert next door. The bargain that Eddie made with Gordon has been fulfilled in a brutal, ungracious fashion. Eddie discovers Sarah has been a victim of suicide - she is sprawled on the bathroom floor. Eddie quickly surmises that Gordon is responsible for her death, although Bert drunkenly mumbles that he lacks blame: "She come in here Eddie and asked me for a drink. I give her one. We had a few more. Eddie, she came in here." Eddie viciously attacks Gordon by the throat until restrained by the officers. In the film's final sequence at the Ames Billiard Hall, Fats and Gordon (shaking dice - of fate - into a cup) await Eddie's arrival for a return match and showdown. The ante is upped from one thousand to three thousand dollars a game - desperate-to-win Eddie has no fear of losing his "life's savings": "That's my bank roll, my life's savings. Whatsa matter Fats? All you gotta do is beat me the first game and I'm on my way back to Oakland." Cooly, Fats replies: "Let's go." As the game is set up, Eddie tells Gordon: "Get on me, Bert, I can't lose." Pausing after the initial break, Eddie sprinkles talcum powder on his hands, and decides to play like a sharp-shooter (in his own words: "You make shots that nobody's ever made before. And you play that game the way nobody's ever played it before"), rather than being calculated and safe. During his pool game's dispassionate winning streak/spree, he purposefully confronts Gordon with his new-found 'character' and emotional toughness:
As the hands of the clock reach six o'clock, Fats gives in and admits defeat. Eddie is redeemed by Fats' concession: "I quit, Eddie. I can't beat you...(To Gordon) You've got yourself a pool player." As Eddie prepares to leave with the entire stake after finally toppling the champion, Gordon bellows for his share of the percentages, and threatens to destroy him with his thugs. Eddie, his enslaved player, undergoes defeat in victory - finding little satisfaction in the ultimate win. In his flawed drive to put winning first, he wasted the one meaningful thing in his life and gave up his humanity: "I traded her in on a pool game." Eddie indicts both himself and Gordon for being inhumane and driving Sarah to suicide: "We really stuck the knife in her, didn't we, Bert?":
Leaving the hostile forces of his life in the pool hall behind him, Eddie breaks his contract with a fierce determination, declares that winning and profits aren't everything, and walks away without giving Bert his share. Although he realizes too late that he has destroyed Sarah, her suicide and sacrificial love have brought about greater maturity, reconciliation and a fearless understanding that he must decisively end his association with the predatory Gordon or his emotional soul will die. Her love was truly important and she didn't die in vain. Bert tolerates Eddie's challenge and criticism, warning that the introspective, philosophical competitor must never play in "a big-time pool hall again." In an ultimate victory, Eddie sacrifices his future in big-time pool. Eddie turns to Minnesota Fats, who's been still and quiet. The beaten, but sympathetic Fats compliments the gracious "winner" in a dignified manner in the final lines:
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