The Cincinnati Kid Blu-ray Review
Do the hustle.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, June 5, 2011
When is a hustler not a hustler? When the hustler is
The Cincinnati Kid and not
The Hustler. It's a little ironic that
The Cincinnati Kid is now following in
The Hustler's fairly recent footsteps by debuting on Blu-ray, as the two films have often been compared, and usually to
The Cincinnati Kid's detriment. Both films deal with ambitious "youngsters" who are out to prove their mettle in vicious tournament exhibitions. In
The Hustler's case, that's pool. With
The Cincinnati Kid, we're in the world of poker. But both films are fairly remarkably alike in terms of overall tone, if not exactly similar in content. The two films also stand as important highlights in their lead actors' careers. While Paul Newman and Steve McQueen had both cut their teeth in 1950's television, Newman was a bit quicker to matriculate to big screen stardom (though McQueen actually had his first screen role before Newman did), and by the time
The Hustler made it to Cineplexes in 1961, he was already well on his way to being that decade's leading male attraction. (Look for McQueen in a bit part in the Newman starrer
Somebody Up There Likes Me, made almost two decades before the two would co-star in
The Towering Inferno). McQueen had had a somewhat tougher road to hoe, and was still establishing his film
bona fides when
The Cincinnati Kid debuted in 1965, despite having had one of his most iconic roles relatively recently with 1963's
The Great Escape. Perhaps the somewhat ambiguous response to McQueen's screen
persona, at least with regard to the reaction given to Newman, is that McQueen was a "pricklier" screen presence and harder to picture in a traditional outright heroic role. Even
The Great Escape showed McQueen's "good guy" colored with some dark undertones. That selfsame coloring was certainly in evidence in a lot of Newman's portrayals, especially in
The Hustler where it was actually a bit shocking, but Newman also had a breezy, light quality at times, notably in his romantic comedies, that McQueen never was able to successfully carry off. But that very darkness served McQueen quite well in
The Cincinnati Kid, a Depression era "poker shark" who, just like Newman's
Hustler character, is out to take down the reigning champion and prove that he's the new Big Man on Campus.
McQueen portrays Eric "The Kid" Stoner, an up and coming poker player who wants to take on Lancey "The Man" Howard (Edward G. Robinson). The fact that we have "The Kid" up against "The Man" is indicative of the sort of shorthand that Ring Lardner, Jr. and Terry Southern's adaptation of Richard Jessup's novel offers, reducing characters to types. Add in the fact that The Kid's virginal girlfriend is named Christian (Tuesday Weld), a blowsy dealer is named Lady Fingers (Joan Blondell), and a sweaty competitor goes by the handle Pig (Jack Weston), and you start to get the idea of how this film presents its "kitchen sink" realities with a large placard proclaiming "Kitchen Sink." And while this aspect of
The Cincinnati Kid is lamentable, perhaps even laughable, it's to the film's (as well as director Norman Jewison's) credit that the actors rise above the silliness to deliver some bristlingly effective performances.
This was in fact the film where Jewison was able to shake off the lightweight romantic comedies that had defined the opening play (to borrow an appropriate term) of his film career (
40 Pounds of Trouble, The Thrill of It All, Send Me No Flowers, The Art of Love). You can see Jewison feeling his way with this film into the solid dramatic flow that would characterize his mature films like
In the Heat of the Night, but there are still stumbles in
The Cincinnati Kid. As with his later films, the best thing about
Cincinnati is the uniformly excellent work by the ensemble, which also includes great turns by Ann-Margret as the straying wife of a conflicted dealer played by Karl Malden. Where the film never really connects is in its supposed depiction of a sordid, dissolute ambience, and in that regard it's decidedly inferior to Richard Rossen's commanding work in
The Hustler. Part of this failure might be attributed to what probably seemed a fairly innocuous choice by Jewison, namely to film
The Cincinnati Kid in color. Despite Jewison's insistence that that choice was necessary due to the different colored cards being used (a debatable issue), black and white might have given this film the gritty ambience that so infused
The Hustler. In fact original director Sam Peckinpah, who was fired two weeks into the filming, had wanted to make the film in black and white and his footage was indeed filmed that way (Jewison refilmed everything, so the final film is all in color).
Also hampering the film (especially with regard to comparing it to
The Hustler) is its very subject matter.
The Hustler at least depicted men in motion, with a "sport" that includes trick shots and other aspects that allow at least some visual interest. Poker after all is a rather sedentary activity, and furthermore it's marked by a complete lack of affect that has entered the public lexicon with the term "poker face." That leaves Jewison dramatically high and dry at times, as he attempts to invest the film with suspense and drama when the actors are stone-faced and attempting to bluff their way into riches. It's an odd dynamic and one from which
The Cincinnati Kid can never successfully build any completely effective impact. Jewison evidently brought Terry Southern into the project to lighten up what Jewison himself felt was a too "turgid" apporach by Lardner, but those results are also mixed. After one of the greatest character introductions in history with regard to Ann-Margret's Melba (pay close attention to what she's doing), the screenplay throws it all away with some
Dynasty level dialogue about constant cheating that not even the great Karl Malden can pull off.
The improbability of the climactic hand has been the subject of much speculation and discourse through the years, something that adds to the unreality of the film. (For a good laugh, mosey over to the Wikipedia entry for
The Cincinnati Kid and read some mathematician's philosophical defense of what probability
really means within the confines of any particular poker hand). By that time, though, The Kid has devolved into the moral equivalent of pudding, and there's such an unseemly undercurrent to the final third of the film that few will be lamenting or celebrating the eventual victor and loser of the big showdown.
The Cincinnati Kid is best appreciated as a transitional film of sorts for several cast and crew members. For scenarist Ring Lardner, Jr., it was a return to a career that had been sadly truncated by the House Unamerican Activities Committee and the blacklist. For Jewison, it was his first foray into turgid dramatics, especially those colored with the Gothic atmosphere of the American south, where he would later make one of his most iconic films. For McQueen, it was one of his first non-action dramatic roles where he could prove he could carry a film. For Ann-Margret and Tuesday Weld,
The Cincinnati Kid gave them the chance to show they were a lot more than just pretty faces. And for three stars of former years (interestingly two of them with strong Warner pedigrees), Edward G. Robinson, Joan Blondell and Karl Malden, the film was an excellent opportunity for career defining character work allowing them to show that increasing age needn't necessarily spell the demise of their livelihoods. While the film itself is a mixed bag, for each of these individuals
The Cincinnati Kid proved to be an important stepping stone. The main problem with
The Cincinnati Kid is in fact that it will probably always be compared, rightly or wrongly, to
The Hustler and is fated to be "always second-best," to quote The Man's assessment of The Kid.
