Universal Classics: The Sting (1973)

As part of its 100th anniversary celebration, Universal Studios is releasing a series of their iconic films on DVD and Blu-Ray. To Kill A Mockingbird was last month, and The Sting is coming up in June.

Now the Academy will only give a Best Picture Oscar to "serious" (i.e. dramatic, epic) movies, but The Sting was so popular it was nominated for ten Oscars and won seven. New Yorker magazine film critic Pauline Kael damn near had a cow on its release: "What is this film about?" she wailed.

Kael simply didn't get it. I could give you the standard answer: it's about two professional grifters trying to swindle a huge amount of money from another con-artist.

What's it really all about? Classic Hollywood filmmaking. And stars. Real stars.

The film reunited director George Roy Hill with Paul Newman and Robert Redford. They had collaborated in 1969 on Butch Cassidy & The Sundance Kid. The music is an evocative pastiche of ragtime and '30s jazz, tweaked to perfection by Marvin Hamlisch. (The soundtrack was one of the top sellers of all time.) Add Robert Shaw as the gangster getting grifted and a charming group of character actors in supporting roles (Ray Walston, Charles Durning, Eileen Brennan). Throw in one of the greatest poker-game sequences ever filmed, and you have a classic that stands up today. The Sting puts 99% of what's out there to shame.

Like any classic film, The Sting has dozens of fascinating behind-the-scenes stories. The toughest role to cast was that of gangster Doyle Lonnegan, performed to the hilt by Robert Shaw (Jaws). No actor in Hollywood wanted to be the bad guy versus Newman and Redford, so  Paul Newman hand delivered the script to Shaw (in London) in order to ensure his participation. Shaw missed out on a Supporting Actor nomination because he insisted on getting top billing with Newman and Redford.

Years later, director Rob Cohen (The Fast and the Furious) revealed that he was hired as a script reader by future studio head Mike Medavoy. Cohen was slogging his way through the "slush" pile of scripts when he read a real page-turner with a great set of twists in it. He convinced Medavoy to take the script to a studio. "It's that good?" Medavoy asked. Cohen said yes. "I'm going to fire you if I can't sell it," was Medavoy's response.

He sold the script of The Sting to Universal that same day.

To purchase The Sting on Blu-Ray in June, click on this link:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B007N31ZBU/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=reelclas02-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=B007N31ZBU

Welcome to Reel Classics

I'm a big classic film fan, and by classic I mean a movie that actually has a plot and characters. Just kidding. Seriously though, the words "Hunger" and "Game" will probably never been seen on this blog together in the same sentence.

Alright "Hunger Game" fans. Take a pill and relax. Here's the thing: remember when movies were movies? When the stars were larger-than-life? When you could pick up the paper and choose half a dozen films in the middle of summer that didn't have computer-generated effects, massive explosions, and a total lack of logic?

If you were 16, like I was in 1974, here's a partial list of films you could see that summer: Chinatown, Death Wish, That's Entertainment, The Parallax View, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat, Thunderbolt and Lightfoot, Daisy Miller. That's right--these were the SUMMER releases. Just in that small list alone you have one acknowledged classic, an Oscar-nominated Clint Eastwood film, a salute to Hollywood's golden days, and an X-rated comedy that changed the way we looked at animation.

Reel Classics. The title says it all. I'll be discussing unsung classic films from 1927-1976. The stars. The studios. Character actors. The theaters.

Settle back. The lights are dimmming. The previews are over. The main feature begins.