SZ-Sportfilme – 3rd place: Sharks of the Big City and The Color of Money – Sport


Sports films naturally have a difficult time: The inclined sports fan immediately recognizes that even gifted actors are not necessarily top athletes and that top athletes are even less likely to be gifted actors. But in recent years the selection of successful films has grown steadily: The SZ sports editorial team presents 22 of them and thus selects the – highly subjective – 22 best. This time 3rd place with two films – “The Hustler” and “The Color of Money”.

A car drives to a gas station. Two men get out. The younger one gives the gas station attendant a few instructions. Then they go to a bar across the street, drink, play pool. They are representatives for vacuum cleaners, says the older one, and the younger one is a real ace at it; Last month he sold vacuum cleaners for $ 17,000. But “apparently he can’t take much,” says one of the people sitting around. Because the younger one dips one whiskey after the other, “JTS Brown”, always JTS Brown, and when he succeeds in a particularly difficult push, he bets his fellow traveler that he will get the same push again. He fails. He wants a revenge for 150 dollars, as much as he earns in a week. The older one waves it off: “You are drunk.” A viewer says: “What a shame about him. Nice guy.” But then the barman reports: “Should I get in?” He smells easy prey. And the trap snaps shut.

A little later, the younger, Eddie, hands over a bulging wallet to the older, Charlie, in the car. They ripped off the naive idiots in the bar. Eddie Felson, the “fast Eddie”, got them on the hook.

Full to the brim with bourbon and overconfidence

The opening sequence to “The Hustler” (Sharks of the Big City) leads to the action as suddenly as the kick-off to a game of pool. Boom! The film from 1961 (director: Robert Rossen) is a didactic piece about the greed for recognition, about impatience and stupidity, rise and fall. A sports film? Well, the trick, the feint, the bluff – all of this belongs to billiards like football, boxing or chess (only it says strategy there). Paul Newman as Eddie Felson is a soul mate of Eric Stoner, the 1965 “Cincinnati Kid” with Steve McQueen in the role of a young poker professional. Both push for quick fame, both want to show it to the old top dogs: Eddie the fat “Minnesota Fats”, Eric the goat-bearded Lancey Howard. Jackie Gleason as the blasé billiard master in “The Hustler” radiates nothing of the menace of the mobster mime Edward G. Robinson (“Little Caesar”), under whose opaque surface the cold killer instinct of a predator lurks.

A little too tame: Jackie Gleason as “Minnesota Fats” (left) looks at the gesticulating “fast Eddie” (Paul Newman)

(Photo by 20thCentFox / Everett Collection / imago)

In “Cincinnati Kid” Robinson McQueen destroys McQueen at the end with a single sentence: “You are good, kid. But as long as I exist, you will be number two.” In “The Hustler”, on the other hand, there is a supposed showdown early on. Eddie first introduces Fatty; full to the brim with too much bourbon and overconfidence, it goes under colossally afterwards. This end is of course only the beginning of the real catastrophe. When he is on the ground, Eddie meets the drinker Sarah, two unstable souls who seek support for each other and yet cannot give. Sarah once dismissed Eddie: “You are too hungry for me.” That hunger will devour them both.

Eddie gets involved with Bert Gordon (sinister as always: George C. Scott), Fatty’s manager, who blackmails him, breaks his thumb and provokes him as a “loser”. Nevertheless, Eddie chases his old partner Charlie away because he expects big money from the unscrupulous Gordon. He also repeatedly pushes Sarah, who is hungry for real love, away until she can no longer at some point. She takes her own life. Eddie realizes too late what he has risked and lost. He challenges and defeats Minnesota Fats one more time – a side note. But there is no compromise with Gordon: Eddie no longer wants to be compromised, at no cost. His life as a pool professional is over.

THE HUSTLER, from left, Piper Laurie, Paul Newman, 1961, TM & Copyright 20th Century Fox Film Corp.  All rights reserved .;  The Hustler

Two who are looking in vain for a stop: Sarah (played by Piper Laurie) and Eddie (Paul Newman).

(Photo by 20thCentFox / Everett Collection / imago)

A Mozart at the pool table

25 years later.

Eddie made money selling liquor and still enjoys drinking JTS Brown. In his regular bar, with whose owner Janelle he has a rather casual on / off relationship, he discovers the young Vincent Lauria. “The boy has a first bump like a steam ram,” Eddie exclaims. Suddenly he feels the old tingling sensation. Vincent is a child prodigy, a Mozart at the pool table, his baton is the cue with which he dabs his symphonies on the green cloth. What he lacks is life experience – tellingly, he works as a salesman at “Child World”. He just wants to play, better than everyone else, and everyone should see that.

Tom Cruise & Paul Newman Characters: Vincent Lauria & Fast Eddie Felson Film: The Color Of Money (1986) Director: Martin;  The Color of Money

Tutoring in rip-offs: Vincent (left, played by Tom Cruise) gets a lesson from Eddie (Paul Newman).

(Photo: Mary Evans / imago)

Vincent lacks the knowledge of the big and small tricks of how to make money with gambling. How to first lure the prey and then hook it. Eddie, fascinated by this undeformed playful child, wants to teach him. And Vincent, a shy lad at first, develops. However, in fast motion he mutates into the same self-drunk snot like “fast Eddie” once was: He believes he can’t lose – and is just a bad loser.

In Martin Scorsese’s “The Color of Money” (1986), Tom Cruise gives this Vincent – just five months after his blockbuster success in “Top Gun” – with childlike, playful stubbornness. It is the perfect mirror for Vincent’s growing narcissism, constantly cheered on by Michael Ballhaus, whose camera admiringly revolves around Cruise, who in turn revolves around his own self-love (whoever entered a billiards salon in the eighties could see many, many Cruise- Seeing copies that would have liked to have been so cool, but only exposed themselves to ridicule when – like Vincent – they waved their cue around like a samurai sword).

The joy of play and life awakens with a boom!

Like “The Color of Money”, curiously enough, “The Hustler” was also photographed by a German: the camera pioneer Eugen Schüfftan, whose great black and white tableaus give the film its very own depth (and a guest appearance by boxer Jake LaMotta as a bartender its very own tragic overtone).

Both “The Hustler” and “The Color of Money” tell of father-son conflicts: Eddie rebels against his partner Charlie, against Minnesota Fats and against Bert Gordon, Vincent rebels against Eddie. The fraction is programmed. Both films, shot based on the novel by Walter Tevis, have the author’s autobiographical traits: Tevis worked in billiard halls as a young man – and was an alcoholic. In “The Hustler” Eddie only loses to Fatty because he was “blue”, or at least that’s what he tells himself; It’s nice when you have an excuse for everything, Gordon slams him in the head.

THE COLOR OF MONEY US 1988 MARY ELIZABETH MASTRANTONIO, TOM CRUISE Date: 1988 PUBLICATIONxINxGERxSUIxAUTxONLY Mandatory;  The Color of Money

A pool hall is not a dojo. Vincent (Tom Cruise) shows off his cue sword fight.

(Photo: Mary Evans Picture Library / Ronald Grant / imago)

In “The Color of Money” Eddie wakes up with one Boom! the joy of play and life again (maybe even a life with Janelle?). He wants to show it to Vincent at the big tournament in Atlantic City. He starts training again – and makes old mistakes. The apparently inexperienced Amos, played by the very young Forest Whitaker, rips him off with every trick in the book. Once again Eddie wonders, “How could I have been shown like that?” And states: “It all fits together: a little too much schnapps, a little too vain.” So is this Eddie Felson a loser after all, as Gordon prophesied?

In Atlantic City, Vincent teaches him a lesson in cynicism. Win by losing, the main thing is that the betting odds are right. Eddie demands revenge again, as he once did against the Minnesota Fats. Vincent asks why. “Hey”, Eddie replies in the original: “I’m back!” One does not quite know what is meant: Back among the living, after 25 years of inner paralysis? Or back in the tragedy of his life?

Reviews already published:

Rank 22: “Free Solo”

Rank 21: “Rush”

20th place: “The naked cannon”

19th place: “Slap Shot”

18th place: “Foxcatcher”

17th place: “The Wrestler”

16th place: “Nowitzki. The perfect throw”

15th place: “Le Grand Bleu”

Place 14: “White Men Can’t Jump”

Rank 13: “I, Tonya”

Rank 12: “Battle of the Sexes”

11th place: “Jerry Maguire”

Rank 10: “Rocky III”

9th place: “The Rider”

8th place: “Moneyball”

7th place: “Million Dollar Baby”

Rank 6: “Senna”

5th place: “Bull Durham”

4th place: “Diego Maradona”

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