The Hustler

The can of talcum powder Eddie is holding switches hands.

Eddie's hands change position on his cue after his first shot against Minnesota Fats.

During the last match between Fats and Eddie, in the first game, Fats attempts a soft break, leaving the cue ball against the rail.

In the establishing shot, the cue ball is clearly bouncing away from the rail, in the next shot, the ball is tight frozen against the rail.

During the last pool match, second game, Minnesota Fats has taken his jacket off, loosened his tie and unbuttoned his vest, but one subsequent shot shows him with his tie tightened and wearing a buttoned vest and jacket.

In Fats' first game against Eddie, his cigarette disappears briefly.

When Eddie puts on his coat and calls Fats "beautiful", his coat collar is turned under.

He turns around while laughing, and when he turns back to face the camera, his coat collar is out, in its proper position.

When Sara is typing drunk, she knocks over the bottle of alcohol in front of the typewriter.

When Eddie picks up the bottle in the next shot, the bottle has been moved to the right.

During Findley's party, all of the musicians fingers are out of sync with the rhythms of the music.

Most noticeable is the clarinetist.

In the last game with Fats, Eddie starts by calling and pocketing the 1 ball and the 12 ball.

Eddie is talking to Bert as he sets up his next shot, a 4 ball, which he then pockets.

His next string of calls - the 5 ball, the 14 ball, and then the 4 ball again (which he had already pocketed).

During the last game, Eddie calls and pockets the 1 ball.

Then he sets up, calls the 12 ball and you hear the ball dropping into the pocket.

Eddie then walks around to the other side of the table and calls the next shot - the 12 ball again.

When Eddie orders the woman in the bus station a coffee, he holds up two fingers, when the camera angle switches, his hand is the other way round.

When Sarah writes words on the mirror, she writes "TWISTEd" - all capital letters except for the "d".

When it is shown later, when Eddie is in the room, it is written in all lower case letters.

In the scenes with Newman in her apartment early in their love affair, Piper Laurie's lines as Sarah are overdubbed.

You can hear an audible dead spot in the soundtrack just before and after Paul Newman's Fast Eddie responds to her lines.

Clearly a post-production issue and a distracting aspect of Laurie's performance in the film.

After thugs break his thumbs, Eddie wears cast on his hands that remain sparking white for weeks - an impossibility because casts are dirt magnets that quickly become dingy-looking under the best of conditions and he's seen spilling coffee on them, lives in a seedy apartment, goes outside for a picnic and so on.

Sarah moves her hand off Eddie's knee twice, when she asks him where he goes when he goes out.

When Sarah walks into the bathroom, we see Bert Gordon in the mirror.

Then when Eddie walks into the bathroom and sees Sarah on the floor, the sink and mirror have been moved to the left side of the room.

When Sarah is lying on the bathroom floor, the bathroom door opens inward and her feet are in front of the door.

The cops would have had to move the body to open the door.

The first time we see Eddie play, he tries to duplicate the corner shot the second time but misses.

The chalk and wallet next to him disappear when he takes the shot, but return in different positions as the ball rolls off the table.

This is one of the Last, maybe the Last, Film-Noir before the Genre Appropriately became Labeled Neo-Noir sometime in the Mid-Sixties. Not much Precise Accuracy in Defining in Film-Noir, among Fans, Critics, and Historians, is Universally accepted as Precise.

...Paul Newman was tied to another film...

For a non-billiards-player, one might cavil this monochromatic classic seems to be a shade monotonous for the first half an hour of the running time, although one will surely be stunned by Newman and Gleason's pool table panache, but thanks to its confined layout and dooming denouement, a game predestined to lose for Newman with a prolonged battle against sleepiness and spiked by alcohol intake, all too familiar and stale to prompt a taut vibe. However, things are getting better, when Sarah (Laurie) being introduced to this male-crammed coterie, she lights up the screen instantly, a damaged cripple longing for a secure relationship, her chimera would eventually be shattered into pieces to cement her lover Eddie's (Newman) "character" which is prerequisite for him to be the top pick among the bunch.

Paul Newman is a young talented pool player who wanders from town to town, living from hustling mediocre players into playing for money. He is convinced that he is the best, and he dreams of proving it by defeating the famous "Minnesota Fats" and taking him at least ten thousand dollars (the equivalent of today's hundred thousand).

Not the most modern film you are going to see, it was filmed in 1961 black and white but one that has reminated with me for hours.It tells the story of a U.

Fast Eddie Felson (Paul Newman) and Charlie Burns (Myron McCormick) are two relatively successful pool hustlers. Felson walks into one pool hall and proudly claims that no-one will play him because no-one can beat him.

A fantastic movie showcasing the talents of a group of great actors!

I don't know. Maybe I'm just not getting it?