The Sting (1973)

I've always considered The Sting, winner for Best Picture of 1973, to be just about perfect. It has just about all you could ever want in a good movie: great actors at the top of their game, an engrossing plot, moral complexity in terms of what and who are good and bad, and a great musical score. What's not to love about this film? I've been a fan since I saw it at the tender age of 10. Yes, my mother took me to see movies like this when I was 10. Perhaps she's more responsible for my love of movies than even she could fathom. (She also took me to see Funny Lady in 1975 when I was only 12, so perhaps she also bears some responsibility for my love of Barbra Streisand, but that's a post for another day--and another site.)

The Sting is about the attempts by Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford) to exact revenge on Doyle Lonnigan (Robert Shaw, two years before Jaws yet just as crusty) for having his friend and fellow grifter Luther (Robert Earl Jones--yes, HIS father) murdered for having lifted some money that was Lonnigan's. Well, it wasn't really Lonnigan's because he's a crook too, just like almost everyone in this film. And that is what makes Lonnigan's and then Hooker's desire for revenge all the more powerful.

Hooker joins forces with Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman), who's known for his ability to play what's known as "the long con," a kind of elaborate scam that takes time to set up and time to pull off successfully. They decide to con Lonnigan over bets for horse races, and their methods for getting him "on the hook" are some of the most entertaining parts of the film, particularly the sequence involving a card game aboard a train.

You've already seen two names that should bring a smile to your face: Newman and Redford, reunited here after Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. They're both charming, just the kind of complicated and beautiful leading men that the 1970s movies seemed to specialize in. They're obviously bad guys, what with the con games and all, but who wouldn't want these two in your corner? Who wouldn't be taken in by those smiles?

The supporting cast is all first-rate. In addition to Shaw and Jones, you have Charles Durning as an inept, crooked cop, Ray Walston and Harold Gould and a dozen more as the supporting players for the con, and Eileen Brennan, who does more with a sideways glance than you can imagine, as a madam who is Gondorff's lover and business "partner."

I love the intertitles throughout the film. They hearken back to the days of silent movies, but they're so lovingly rendered in sepia tones reminiscent of the style of the decade of the 1930s that serves as the setting for the film. And who can't recall that music? Scott Joplin's rags fit the tone of the film perfectly. I once owned a cassette tape on which someone had recorded the album for me. I wore it out from constant playing, so enamored of this film I was at the time. I think I might have to order the CD of the music if it's available, just to continue my reminiscences.

This is the kind of movie that gets it all correct: the performances, the story, the costumes, the music--you name it. You should take the time some day to shut off the telephones and lock the doors. Turn out the lights, and turn on The Sting. It's like visiting with an old friend, a welcome return to a warm feeling that you once had.