Play up and play the game.

The distinctive thread tying all the characters together in the film is sown into the narrative through a series of games. The story itself is a play that self-consciously projects itself through different acts that starts with page turning followed by Act One called "The Set Up". The initial action begins in a street, which could be any street in any city world wide, entertaining drama going on around us, the music of Scott Joplin sounding a bit like that of the organ grinder - we hear it as we go about our business but it ceases once serious dialogue begins. As in any city, nefarious acts of thievery and general skulduggery occur, most people trying to ignore them while knowing full well this is the shared life where shocking degradation exists alongside showy riches - we see only his well cut suit and expensive buckskin shoes as the first character passes along a street inhabited by down-and-outs. When someone gets killed, a person we have come to know and like as the story draws us in, we become involved. There are good guys and bad guys in the tale and, like in a fairy story, the audience wants the good uns to win.

Most games played include a good many tricks, the biggest one in the film is the sting itself, or rather the pay off. Moreover, it's the oldest trick in the pack for a narrator to take the audience forward step by step, in this case in a projection of discrete chapters, and lead them up the garden path into an intriguing maze where dangers of all sorts lurk just around the corner. The last scene of the film, the coup de grace, manages to shock the first-time audience as much as it does Doyle Lonnegan and Lt. Snyder, the baddies in the frame. Unlike the audience, it does not occur to the villains that they are being tricked precisely because they lack the necessary imagination to see games as anything other than a competition in which you simply have to win at all costs, always for personal gain or out of arrogant pride. Everyone cheats but some play with conspicuous heart, intending to divide the shares fairly and keep a bit over for friends in need, while others aim to win purely to demonstrate they are the most powerful with the greatest wealth, which they intend to keep. If thwarted, the acceptance of defeat impossible to accept, the villains set out to smash, destroy or even kill their opponents. Kid Twist warns the others about Lonnegan, that he "kills for pride" and "never plays anything he can't win". As in the background of many football hooligans, it's difficult to imagine characters like Snyder and Lonnegan ever having been young and cooperated in playing with other children. Certainly, they lack any sense of fun.

Those who take part in games, not to speak of the game of life, do so to win and at the same time maintain the rules, which mostly boil down to treating your opponents with grace and goodwill while acting fairly. Doyle Lonnegan doesn't see it at all like that. When his stooge reports that Hooker Kelly, responsible for stealing some of his boss's gambling money, has escaped assassination, and questions whether it's worth pursuing such a small-time crook, Lonnegan insists they continue to go after him. The conversation takes place while Doyle is playing golf, yet another game within a game. He points to a player about to strike the ball, citing him as a buddy in the criminal rackets of the day. If this man found out that he'd been conned by a grifter, he tells the stooge, then he'd deem it time to take over Lonnegan's crooked empire and so Doyle would have to kill him first. Appearance is everything, the trappings of wealth and power vitally important to this noble citizen who has to demonstrate he is somebody of note. When we first meet Henry Gondorff , the contrast is striking.

The game of life.

Henry, played by Paul Newman, is snoring, having fallen out of bed after a bout of heavy drinking. Later, lying in a bath with his clothes on and showering in cold water in an attempt to shake off the hangover, a disillusioned Hooker, who has high expectations of him, looks on in disgust. Gondorff's slummy dwelling, reflecting poverty and disregard for decent hygiene is a very different setting from the one Doyle Lonnegan inhabits. Robert Redford, coming together once more with Newman after their success in the earlier film Sundance, plays the grifter, or petty thief. At first, completely unimpressed by Gondorff, a man reputed to be top of the class in any big scam, Hooker soon has reason to change his views. In fact, Gondorff's character is essentially protean, one moment a down-and-out, the next minute playing a high-powered executive wearing very expensive suits. In the rôle, Newman represents the true American hero, someone who is basically a decent guy but not averse from making a buck whenever an opportunity offers itself. He can mix it with the lowest and the highest in the land and still maintain integrity. His friends trust him and he has only to give a sign that the game is on, in this case a knowing tap on the nose, for others to rally immediately to the cause.

All the characters exist on the fringes of society, most of them loveable rogues who have little money and live mainly by their wits - David Ward says that the idea for his script came out of researches into the business of pickpockets. He argues that many of these grifters steal from greedy folk but are not ungenerous themselves.. Crooks like Lonnegan, who is associated with big business (Doyle tells Hooker, "I'm known for my banking interests"), has a sole aim in life of making money and keeping up respectable appearances. The covetous are always fair game for satirists and have a host of antecedents in plays and novels like, for example, The Beggars Opera, Henry Fielding's Jonathan Wild and Ben Johnson's The Alchemist. Gondorff's girl friend, Billie, played by the charming Eileen Brennan, runs a gambling den with a bordello and a Hurdy-Gurdy on the side. When we first see the girls, they are enjoying a spin on the roundabouts. Everywhere throughout the film, play and life are intermixed, except for a humourless almost puritanical Lonnegan always intent on beating his opponent, if necessary to death, in order to win. He plays golf with wealthy cohorts and poker with other rich men but has no scruples about cheating and killing.

The artifice that Henry Gondorff devises in order to divest Lonnegan of his most precious garment, wealth, is predicated on an elaborate game called "The Wire" that involves a whole host of people who have to act out their allotted parts in yet more play acting. Continually, we are watching a performance in which the characters assume a variety of roles. Although the cinema audience thinks it knows what is going on, and is being continually reminded all the time that they are watching something make-believe, in the process they are cleverly duped. Moreover, the film still convinces us that there is a real life-like struggle taking place between the forces of good and the powers of darkness. To some extent, it is in the nature of filmic realism to make us believe we are watching actual events and living people, the 1930s setting producing a nice blend of the magical and the real. The beauty of The Sting is that it appears to make everything simple while it succeeds in creating a number of very subtle impressions on those watching. In this respect, it is unlike so many science-fiction fantasy films that play on people's secret fears and wishes but which end up as little more than an entertaining and juvenile form of escapism. George Roy Hill's film is something different.

The play of fancy.

Watching The Sting is like viewing life through coloured glass, a kaleidoscope of many shapes being shaken up and forever changing in a variety of many descriptions. Although it is a comedy in the old meaning of the genre where the central characters survive, it is still mature art that informs as well as entertains, doing so in the most artful of ways. The playful element is dominant, life conducted through a series of games, as has been argued, yet it is also deadly serious at the same time. When Hooker and his mates decoy the intermediary with the betting cash and relieve him of his consignment, little do they realise the consequences. At first, they celebrate their good fortune, Hooker lavishing out gifts to his girlfriend and betting large sums at the gambling table, a game in which he is cheated of his ill-gotten gains. Then he's confronted by the crooked cop, Lt. Snyder, who wants his cut. Hooker hands over counterfeit notes, storing up yet more trouble for himself. Finally, his friend and partner in petty crime, Luther Coleman, is murdered by Lonnegan's henchmen.

It is Luther's death that sends Hooker on a quest for justice to be meted out to those who caused his murder. The elaborate sting, devised by Henry Gondorff, is never intended to deal roughly with Lonnegan but instead becomes a subtly planned scam that will not take his life but will rather deprive him of that possession which gives most meaning to his life, money. There are many delightful comic scenes enacted in the process, not least in the "decoration" episode in the Western Union office, the cod FBI agents in their boaters and Gondorff in bed with his hat on. Indeed, the various layers of plot and action are carefully built up like a wonderfully layered wedding cake, the flavour of the icing not fully tasted until the final frames of the film. Hooker, the loose atom in the whole story, is a true picaro, often lonely and in search of romantic love while questing for fulfilment through satisfaction of youthful energy yet having disregard for his own safety and health. Quick to enjoy the physical satisfactions of the world around him, he remains loyal to those he loves and admires. At the end, when Henry offers him his share of the loot, he doesn't take a penny, saying, "Nah, I'd only blow it," adding, "It's not enough." - he means that the experience has been everything, the money nothing in the end.

It's hard to imagine a film made with more colour than The Sting, the vividness of rich reds, greens and yellow predominating - the actors dress up wonderfully for their parts, Hooker's luridness of clothes, for example, exactly right for his character. The bright colours and the crystal clear photography, everything distinct and sharply edged, natural sounds often the only background, the music when introduced not intrusive but truly atmospheric, all contribute to the film's distinctive style. Even the dialogue is quotable, a rarity for many Hollywood films. It is, of course, artificiality through and through and yet, within its own terms, not exaggeration. Like all good art, the makers establish a consistently sapid tone, the narrative rolling along confidently at all times. Fully aware they are being told a story, the audience finds it a convincing and true one. The games and play elements involved correspond to a truth of human existence, namely one that most people understand from their own lives when they stand back and examine them and see a sort of story unfolding, often very confusing and with various kinds of ups and downs. What the film does for us, itself a screenplay of course, is to perform a major function of art in bringing order, beauty and completeness to a view of human behaviour.

The play's the thing wherein we catch…..

The impact of cinema on audiences from its early days has been founded on its ability both to represent seemingly real life and people and at the same time compound the dream element that is congruent with human psychology. In many ways, it takes the "realism" of the novel to a higher level because a wide range of human types within a hugely varied setting can be shown in action before our eyes. Cinema is essentially theatre with a very large canvas as the stage. What it does less well than live theatre, with actors in the flesh before us, is to make us feel physically involved - eg we rarely clap but rather sit alone in the dark with our own private thoughts and fantasies. In this respect, cinema is closer to the novel in its very personal mode of communication but is less good than the written word at wrapping around the viewer an enhanced sense of a self in complex relationships. Possibly film is forever a contemporary art form, constantly youthful but finding it a little difficult to grow up and become fully mature. Exactly where cinema belongs in the culture of our times might be the key question to ask. It was once claimed that the moving image would send the written word to the wings, the novel, for example, no longer centre stage. The more relevant question we have to ask nowadays is can film claim any future beyond yet more digitally enhanced fantasy narratives, leaving centre stage television with its sitcoms, comedy shows and soaps.

The Sting deservedly took seven Oscars, including best picture, best director and best screenplay. That was in the early 1970s, during a period of great creativity among a string of directors and producers making their Hollywood debut. Other important films, like The Godfather, were also being made in the same decade. It's very interesting that the setting for many of these films take us back to an earlier period of history. The 1930s, as depicted in The Sting, are seen as a colourful time replete with a wide range and variety of human types. If we flash forward, to the 1990s, say, and look at the way modern life is depicted in films coming out of Hollywood, they either present us with a savage satire, that shows up modern life as evanescent, lacking core meaning and desperately short of characters we can love and wonder at, or we are encouraged to indulge in far-fetched adolescent fantasies.

The Sting is a mature work of art, I believe, that can be enjoyed by young and old. That it is entertaining and highly popular with audiences should not detract from its intrinsic merit of being able to communicate at many different levels. The gut message of the film, conveyed by a widely assorted list of persons and situations, is that those who play at life with gusto, imagination and good will towards their fellows make the most interesting and versatile of human beings while those who have to win at all costs become horribly diminished in their humanity. When Doyle Lonnegin shouts out desperately at the end that he wants his money back, the cries echo down the centuries, the constant howl of the rich who have put all their golden eggs into one basket and are hardly conscious that they will be of little use in the grave. Above all, the film succeeds because it is script led, the vision of one writer realised through the many talents of others who recognised its great merit]. Significantly, a strong-minded director, who understood the cinematic significance of the written material, took over.

Game set and match.

A mood of optimism and a great belief in what they were doing characterised everyone who took part in making the film. Speaking about the way it was done over thirty years later, various actors are united in their view that the film had been terrific fun in the making and that it was a real work of art. Ray Walston, who played Singleton, said, "The whole tapestry is a such a wonderful piece of work," adding that the cast worked together as a true ensemble. Dmitra Arliss, the sinister Salino, said, "The director ran the show - something impossible to imagine in present-day Hollywood." She heaped lavish praise on George Roy Hill, who died in 2002 at the age of 81. Hill, a cultivated and well-educated man with a brave war record, knew exactly what he was doing. Arliss explains in the interview how he insisted on her playing the part against the wishes of the producers and described what pains he took to get her to look right and make the rôle memorable. Paul Newman also had great regard for George Hill, relating what a marvellous sense of humour the man had and, like Arliss, lamenting how rare a quality any kind of fun there is to be had in making films these days. The brilliant performances of all the actors is a treat to watch, not least the outstanding portrayal of Doyle Lonngan by Robert Shaw, with his crooked limp and menacing question of "D'yer foller me?" The limp, caused by an accident in the gym, turned out to be a case of serendipity. When the director observed how he walked, he insisted he keep it for the rest of the film. Shaw died in 1978, a real loss for the world of cinema. Fortunately, his terrific portrayal is one among many in a film that works wonderfully at every level.

Films often do best in what they do simply, the films of Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton that appealed to millions all across the world in the early days of cinema very good examples. Possibly, sophisticated comedy is the ideal subject for the art of cinema. The Sting does succeed in being both highly entertaining and yet managing to convey some basic values about human relationships. Unfortunately such films are becoming more and more rare. While the big corporate studios are failing to turn out the real goods hope might be found in more independent and smaller companies forming themselves. Films are always expensive to make but the digital revolution has already begun to reduce expenditure. More importantly, although it is undoubtedly the case that in The Sting the director found two star performers in Redford and Newman the film itself, because based on such a wonderful script, worked well for all the actors taking part. In fact, good though Newman and Redford were, the film didn't rely on stars to work effectively. The film succeeded because it was properly conceived and executed.

J.D.D. May 2006