Paul Newman won his only best actor Oscar for Martin Scorsese's The Color of Money, the 1986 sequel to Robert Rossen's 1961 masterpiece, The Hustler. But he ought to have won it for The Hustler, as any viewer can see when it plays tomorrow at noon at the Charles Theatre's Saturday revivals series. (Admission is $5.)
As Fast Eddie Felson in The Hustler, Newman creates a portrait of the artist as a pool player. His pride in craft should make him a Hemingway hero. But he exhibits gracelessness under pressure in an epic bout with Minnesota Fats (Jackie Gleason) and lets a Satanic gambler-manager named Bert (George C. Scott) get a hook into him by calling him a born loser.
The love of a sad lady (Piper Laurie) nearly heals Eddie after Fats busts his ego and waterfront thugs break his thumbs. Unfortunately, he doesn't trust love any more than he does his own mental fiber.
Rossen intersperses the consummate pool matches - the rare sporting sequences that show men battling their demons as well as each other - with equally probing scenes of romance between two wounded people. Laurie's contribution to this movie has long been underrated: She evokes the hidden power of a wayward, self-destructive personality. And Newman is amazing at embodying the conflicted emotions in what is perhaps his best role.
The Hustler takes Eddie Felson from despair to tragedy-tinged triumph. There's no Rocky finish here. What Eddie shouts to Bert at the climax is a two-sided death threat: "You tell your boys they better kill me, Bert. They better go all the way with me. Because if they just bust me up, I'll put all those pieces back together, and so help me, so help me God, Bert ... I'm gonna come back here and I'm gonna kill you."
'Altar' call
Cinema Sundays at the Charles closes out its spring season with the long-awaited showing of The Dangerous Lives of Altar Boys, an offbeat coming-of-age story that has nothing to do with recent scandals in the Catholic Church and everything to do with the cross-wired creativity and craziness of adolescence.
Kieran Culkin stars as the most volatile of the altar boys, with Jodie Foster as the villain - a rigid nun - and Vincent D'Onofrio in the small role of a scruffy, sympathetic priest. Peter Care directed, but Todd McFarlane of Spawn fame contributed the electrifying animated superhero scenes, welding the boys' real conflicts with their imaginative life.
Former Sun reporter and bard of Highlandtown Rafael Alvarez, himself a veteran of Catholic school, leads the discussion. Doors open and bagels and coffee are served at 9:45 a.m.; the screening starts at 10:35. Admission is $15.
Creative Alliance
Tomorrow night, the Creative Alliance MovieMakers highlight Lo Fi Landscapes: Films by Bill Brown and Thomas Comerford, on tour from Chicago.
Brown has gone back to the future, pioneering "pinhole cinematography" with his own camera obscura and joining it to sounds grabbed out of the air or put together with homey materials, not on a soundstage or with a synthesizer.
Comerford practices a sort of cinematic performance art involving stickers with city names on them, an enormous outdoor map of Canada, and the declaration that, thanks to the Copernican Revolution, "we've found our place in the universe."
An appearance by the Goldbug - Baltimore's country-influenced (and presumably Poe-influenced) punk band - rounds out the show. It goes on at 8 p.m. at the Creative Alliance, 413 S. Conkling St.; admission is $5 for CAmm members, $7 for non-members.
Creative Alliance joins forces with the the Charm City Annex next Wednesday to screen Voice of the Voiceless, Tania Cuevas-Martinez's nonfiction film about Mumia Abu-Jamal's career as a social activist and radical journalist and the international movement to clear him of his conviction for cop-killing.
The two organizations have paired this documentary with Baltimore filmmaker Kenneth Gibbs' short, Tribute, for an evening dubbed "Dissemination: A Juneteenth Project." The night's entertainment also includes live performances by slam artist The Dri Fish, jazz-soul vocalist Terri Kee (and the New Movement), gospel singer Fateemah and poet Andria Cole.
It all takes place on June 19 - the 137th anniversary of slaves in Galveston, Texas, belatedly learning of their freedom, 2 1/2 years after the Emancipation Proclamation - at the Creative Alliance, 413 S. Conkling St. Mario Armstrong, host of TV and radio's The Digital Spin, will be emcee of the show, which starts at 7 p.m. and costs $4 for members, $6 for non-members.