Few American coming-of-age movies are great. Most suffer from the tendency toward sentimentality, seeming—especially in retrospect—excessively maudlin. I think of Dead Poets Society or Stand By Me as examples. In a category below these there’s the film that signaled the end of Coppola’s talent, The Outsiders (which confirmed that One From the Heart wasn’t a one-off mistake)—a film so atrocious that, having seen it, I couldn’t enjoy The Godfather or Apocalypse Now for months.
On the other hand, we have The Graduate, Rebel Without a Cause and American Graffiti. These are all good, if dated, movies. But at a higher level, there are few American equivalents to Truffaut’s The 400 Blows, or Bergman’s Fanny and Alexander. Peter Bogdanovich’s first (and possibly only) true masterpiece, The Last Picture Show, is undisputedly one of them. But at the core of the coming-of-age film is the narrative of the development of character. There’s no better example of the genre than Robert Rossen’s The Hustler and its sequel, Martin Scorsese’s The Color of Money, which I analyze together, as two parts of one story.
Unique in the way they handle their theme of character—what it is, how it’s built, and how it’s lost or maintained over time—these films retain a sharp focus and avoid getting bogged down in wistfulness and easy emotionalism. True to the form of the bildungsroman, they demonstrate the psychological development of their protagonists from the end of adolescence into adulthood. They’re stories of formation or education, though, unlike in the popular John Hughes teenage movies, for instance, or most of the films mentioned above; they focus on men growing up in a seedier and less middle-class world. Juxtaposing this setting against the immensity of their talent, they tell the story not of an average transition to adulthood, but of the unique struggles of one who strives for greatness—even if it’s greatness within a less than reputable milieu.
Paul Newman’s well-cast in both films as protagonist Fast Eddie Felson. The first part of the story is a simple one: a young pool hustler and his manager work their way to New York in order to challenge the reigning poolhall great, Minnesota Fats (played to perfection by a rotund yet agile Jackie Gleason). Young Eddie loses to the middle-aged Fats not because he lacks the talent to beat him, but lacks the character to master himself. In the aftermath of this defeat, he hustles small dives and billiard clubs, falls in love, and works his way toward a stake sufficient to challenge Fats again. As a result of some bad decisions and the inevitable single-mindedness necessary for his project, Eddie loses the girl in a dramatic fashion to suicide, but pulls himself together, eventually challenging and beating his older rival. In the second movie we see what life has done to a man who achieved greatness early on, and what he has to do to regain it.
In terms of cinematic quality, the films aren’t equal. The Hustler suffers from overly dramatic and on-the-nose speeches given by too emphatic actors—it feels dated. While shot well by Eugen Schufftan, it’s overlong and meandering after the first, intense, and well-paced scenes with Minnesota Fats. The pacing becomes too slack during the sequences that focus on Eddie’s love affair with Sarah (Piper Laurie). And while not exactly maudlin, these scenes lunge toward sentimentality. This is a flawed film that still manages to achieve greatness on the strength of Newman’s performance, the script (by Sidney Carroll, based on the book by Walter Tevis), and the fascinating way it treats the problem of the development of character.
The Color of Money, on the other hand, is a masterpiece directed by one of the great auteurs of American cinema. The quality of the cinematography by Michael Ballhaus (coming off of several films with Rainer Warner Fassbinder) exceeds even the first film, the pacing is even and pitch perfect throughout, and the acting is less noticeable, more realistic. Comparing Newman’s performances in these two films reveals how much he improved his craft with the decades. Similarly, the integration of music (score by Robbie Robertson) and editing (Thelma Schoonmaker) is flawless and creates a rhythm ideal for the material, so that we can hardly catch our breath and keep up with the onrushing narrative.
In these ways the films are very different. But in their treatment of Fast Eddie, the sequel is the perfect response to, development of, and conclusion of the original.
In The Hustler, character is revealed immediately and over time. Fast Eddie’s character is apparent from his first scene: he’s cocky, impetuous, shallow, and vain. He’s also handsome, talented, and gaining recognition in the only world he cares about—the world of billiards (he’s recognized within two minutes of entering Ames Pool Hall, the setting for the film’s most important scenes).
We come to know Fats only over time. He’s cagey and self-contained, a wry smile playing over his lips when he meets the young challenger. He doesn’t reveal himself right away for strategic reasons—because he’s older and more adept at managing his masks or personae. But this is also because he’s established, known to those around him, and doesn’t need to prove himself.
Fats shows Eddie just enough of his talent to hook him. He sets him up with a false sense of superiority, lets it ride for hours, convincing his rival that he’s on the ropes, and then crushes him when the time’s right. Eddie wears himself out while Fats bides his time. He hustles him. But he does so by first catching Eddie’s attempted hustle, creating the illusion that they’re both above the standard manipulation, like a concord among thieves.
But this too turns out to be pretense. What Eddie sees as beyond a hustle is just a new hustle on a higher level. Fats plays to his strength, which is inseparable from his character: he can go all night and all day without any breakdown of quality, while Eddie builds toward a grand climax and then, spent, can only limp along at a fraction of his earlier strength.
Fats baits Eddie using his youthful ego against him. He even allows Eddie to see that he’s better in some sense, a condensed form, maybe. And he does this because he’s comfortable playing with various masks. He doesn’t need to support and reaffirm his ego at every moment. He knows that, in the end, at least, he can win. This is why he never brags, while Eddie can’t stop. It’s also why Eddie gives complete answers to questions—and then adds more than necessary—while Fats nods, smirks, and responds laconically, indicating only the essentials. Fast Eddie is frenetic and on the verge of losing control. Fats is slower, in some sense weaker, but in control, and completely self-possessed.
Bert Gordon, the gambler and “stake horse,” or financial backer (played in one of the great performances by George C. Scott), sees this immediately, and taunts Eddie, saying casually but emphatically to Fats, “Stay with this kid, he’s a loser.” And this is how their first encounter ends: Eddie can’t maintain himself over the grueling day and a half of straight games. He’s already blown his energy bragging and primping and smiling prematurely. He has nothing left. Fats spends the same stretch of early games just warming up, waking up, and preparing for later. Eddie never considers the end because he can’t see the whole picture. Recognizing this, he projects it onto his partner, Charlie. But he says it out loud, and so becomes dimly conscious of the problem, and this is where he begins to lose. And he loses not so much because he is outplayed in any straightforward sense, but because he is outmanned—his character can’t compete with Fats’.
Later in the film Gordon explains Eddie’s loss. Eddie asks why, if he has talent, he still lost to Fats. Gordon says: “Everybody’s got talent… You think you can play big money straight pool or poker for 40 straight hours on nothing but talent? You think they call Minnesota Fats the best in the country just because he’s got talent? Nah. Minnesota Fats has got more character in one finger than you’ve got in your whole skinny body.”
Fats wins because he plays the man in addition to playing the game. He sees Eddie for what he is and creates a mask appropriate to unman his opponent.
Later, when Eddie’s reduced to hustling around New York City, hoping to build up a stake to play Fats again, he winds up getting his thumbs broken for being a hustler. But as he admits to girlfriend Sarah later on, he could easily have won without letting on that he’s so much better than his opponents. Why doesn’t he? Because he can’t bridle himself. He must show off and acknowledged as the greater player. He’s taunted by his opponent, a lesser hustler who, like Eddie playing Fats, suddenly finds himself out of his depth. But here, even when Eddie wins, he loses, because of his character. And so, having outed himself as a sophisticated hustler, the regulars of the dingy pool hall break his thumbs to punish him. Once again he wins in terms of skill, but loses anyway.
From here Eddie finds love and loses it in a tragic way, so that, taken with his brutal physical suffering and his sense of absolute failure, he finally finishes growing up. When they meet again Eddie’s caught up to Fats: he’s self-possessed and knows how to reserve his strength; he stays sober, doesn’t brag, and remains focused on his task. Even though the knitted thumbs reduce his skill, he beats the older man because he can now marshal every strength that matters, not merely his talent.
Of equal importance, he refuses to pay Bert what the latter claims as his share in the win, and thereby repudiates the sordid world that he’s come up in. He’s knowingly barred from pool halls, gambling and hustling. He chooses to leave with dignity, having accomplished his task.
When we meet Eddie again he hasn’t played pool for decades. But that’s not really a surprise. His goal had been to beat Minnesota Fats and establish himself as the greatest player of his time. He wanted the glory more than the money. When, at the end of The Hustler, Bert tells him not to show his face in another “big time pool hall again,” we get the sense that he no longer sees this as a punishment, because he’s already achieved what he went to New York to do, and because it cost him the life of his girlfriend, and probably first love, Sarah. He’s won and lost, and so he has no business in a “big time pool hall” anymore anyway.
How can there be a sequel? No one would be particularly interested in the story of how Eddie came to be a liquor salesman and smalltime, Midwestern version of Bert—staking hustlers and managing bets—which is where we find him at the beginning of The Color of Money. He needs to be pulled back into a world of competition and struggle for us to be interested in him again. Richard Prince’s screenplay, based on another book by Tevis, gets him back by introducing a younger protagonist who reminds Eddie of himself.
This is the great thing about The Color of Money: Fast Eddie Felson is forced to mentor a version of himself. And this reminds him of what he was like as a young man. Vincent (a young, smug Tom Cruise, perfectly cast), his sometimes willing and sometimes aloof protégé, is arrogant, crass, vain and callow. But like Eddie at his age, he’s also extremely talented and monomaniacal. I know of no other movie like this, especially since the only way for it to work is to have had the entire first film to establish Eddie’s character at the same age. This alone makes Scorsese’s film one of the most fascinating sequels of all time. It’s a follow-up character study about a man we already know. What makes it especially interesting is that we get to learn about him again, at a completely different point in his life.
And once again the theme is character. As Eddie explains to Vincent early on: “Pool excellence is not about excellent pool; it’s about becoming something.”
“Like what?” Vincent asks, half-amused and half-curious.
“You got to be a student of human moves. That’s my area of excellence.”
What’s most interesting about Eddie’s self-definition is that it obscures the more fundamental question of how Eddie could become a version of someone he hates—Bert the stake horse. This is the source of tension that will ultimately drive him back into playing pool for himself, which is the real dramatic arc of the second film. Because it’s true that Eddie remains a hustler, and therefore one who understands human motivations and drives—or “human moves,” as he likes to put it. The problem is that, in becoming a version of someone he hates, Eddie fails to apply this developed psychology to himself.
He might be making money, but has given up the drive for greatness that allowed him, in the first film, to earn character. He beat Minnesota Fats only so he could sink down lower than he was when hustling around the cheap barrooms and pool halls of lower-class New York City, bragging about how much money he’s made. In this he imitates Bert exactly, to the extent that he uses his fancy car to impress his mark. Bert did the same to him. Now, perhaps unconsciously, he shows off to Vincent’s girlfriend and would-be manager, the aptly-named Carmen (a young, gorgeous, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio).
“So this is liquor money?” she asks, impressed. And Eddie smiles like a schoolboy who’s gotten the right answer in front of the class.
It’s just this type of low vanity that he’ll later repudiate. In a sense the repudiation is the only way he can come back to himself and focus his energies on the pursuit of excellence, rather than simple acquisitiveness. It’s the close presence of greatness that reawakens Eddie’s drive to compete. Seeing Vincent’s budding talents and recognizing his drive to realize them, he’s brought back to the glory of the agon—the contest, the struggle. And so he begins to shoot pool again, building himself back up from the bottom.
From the perspective of the classic coming-of-age story, The Color of Money presents a failed quest or experience. Vincent doesn’t reach any kind of respectable maturity by the end of the film. In fact, while The Hustler is structured like a true bildungsroman, The Color of Money only appears that way during the first two acts. Later, the teacher or role model, becomes the protagonist. By the last act of the film, we see Eddie regaining what he has lost, reentering the contest of life, completing his formation at an advanced. But Vincent ceases to develop. We leave him where we started with Eddie—sunk in vanity and mercenary ambition.
Fast Eddie Felson has lived out his exile, but Vincent’s yet to recognize his own.
—Follow Panurge on Twitter: @Panurgien