This is going to be another brief one, I suspect, because having seen The Sting I'm not entirely sure I can do it justice. When I sat down to watch it yesterday I did so in anticipation of a few hours of pleasure rather than an easy blog entry, which seemed like a smart idea at the time but now maybe not so much.
I love movies about heists and cons and grifters, but I get the feeling that this is where I should be telling you what the film is about and I honestly couldn't, beyond the basics. Robert Redford stars as Johnny Hooker, a young conman who loses his partner in crime after accidentally grifting the wrong guy. Since by his own admission, he knows nothing about killing, he sets out to get his revenge in the only way he knows how, teaming up with Paul Newman's Henry Gondorff, master of the long con, to milk the murderous Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw) for everything he has.
I honestly don't think I've seen a film like this before. It's intelligent and innovative and warm and witty at once, deploying a broad arsenal of tricks to create an atmosphere of romance and mischief that sits well within the depression-era setting. What sticks in my mind are the little things - the costume design, or the beautifully painted interstitials that divide the story into segments so we can keep track of where we are. It all hangs together wonderfully, creating a particularly immersive experience of a sort that you just don't really get any more.
On balance, I think that what I probably loved most about The Sting are the nods to silent film - the chaptered narrative structure, certainly, but also the use of music. Entire scenes are played out without the use of dialogue, accompanied by Marvin Hamlisch's award-winning re-working of Scott Joplin's The Entertainer.
All in all, this one was an eminently watchable delight, and richly deserving of its best picture Oscar. My initial thoughts on this were that it would never have won nowadays because the committee tends to be so much more pedestrian. Even this decade, however, films like The Artist have won, though - heck, this year Birdman got the gong. I haven't seen either of these yet, but as far as I'm aware neither of them are exactly conventional. There is, however, a common thread - showbusiness. The Artist and The Sting are both steeped in silent film lore, and Birdman stars former superhero actor Michael Keaton as, well, a former superhero actor. It's a testament to the essentially onanistic nature of Hollywood, I suppose, but even this is better than nothing if it means that genuine creativity can be rewarded once in a while.
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