The Sting
The Sting | |
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Directed by | George Roy Hill |
Written by | David S. Ward |
Produced by | |
Starring | |
Cinematography | Robert Surtees |
Edited by | William Reynolds |
Music by | Marvin Hamlisch |
Production companies |
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Distributed by | Universal Pictures |
Release date |
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Running time | 129 minutes |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Budget | $5.5 million[1] |
Box office | $257 million |
The Sting is a 1973 American
The film plays out in distinct sections with old-fashioned
Released on Christmas of 1973, The Sting was a massive critical and commercial success and hugely successful at the 46th Academy Awards, nominated for ten Oscars and winning seven, including Best Picture, Best Director, Best Film Editing and Best Original Screenplay; Redford was also nominated for Best Actor. The film rekindled Newman's career after a series of big-screen flops. Regarded as having one of the best screenplays ever written, The Sting was selected in 2005 for preservation in the U.S. National Film Registry of the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". It was followed by a sequel, The Sting II, in 1983.
Plot
In 1936, amid the
Hooker finds Gondorff in hiding from the
Aboard the opulent 20th Century Limited, Gondorff, posing as the boorish Chicago bookie "Shaw", buys into Lonnegan's private, high-stakes poker game and infuriates Lonnegan with his obnoxious behavior, then cheats him out of $15,000. Hooker, posing as "Shaw's" disgruntled employee "Kelly", is sent to collect the winnings and to convince Lonnegan to help him take over "Shaw's" operation. Hooker returns home to find Lonnegan's men waiting for him, but avoids their pursuit; Gondorff is spooked by their proximity, but Hooker convinces him to keep the con alive.
Snyder's pursuit of Hooker attracts the attention of undercover FBI agents led by Agent Polk, who orders Snyder to bring Hooker in to entrap Gondorff. Meanwhile, Lonnegan, frustrated with his men's inability to kill Hooker for the Joliet con, orders the job to be given to Salino, his best assassin. A mysterious figure with black leather gloves begins following and observing Hooker.
"Kelly" gives Lonnegan a tip on a 7-to-1 long shot that pays off; when Lonnegan presses him for details, he reveals that he has a partner, "Les Harmon" (actually con man Kid Twist), in the Chicago
Feeling despondent the night before the sting, Hooker sleeps with a diner waitress named Loretta. The next morning, as she walks toward him in an alley, the black-gloved man appears and shoots her dead. The man reveals that he was hired by Gondorff to protect Hooker and that the waitress was in fact Salino.
At "Harmon's" direction, Lonnegan bets $500,000 at "Shaw's" parlor on a horse named Lucky Dan. As the race begins, "Harmon" arrives and expresses shock at Lonnegan's bet: when he said "place it" he meant that the horse would "place" (i.e.,
Cast
- Paul Newman as Henry Gondorff
- Robert Redford as Johnny Hooker
- Robert Shaw as Doyle Lonnegan
- Charles Durning as Lt. William Snyder
- Ray Walston as J.J. Singleton
- Eileen Brennan as Billie
- Harold Gould as Kid Twist
- John Heffernan as Eddie Niles
- Dana Elcar as FBI Agent Polk
- Jack Kehoe as Erie Kid
- Dimitra Arliss as Loretta
- Robert Earl Jones as Luther Coleman
- James J. Sloyan as Mottola
- Charles Dierkop as Floyd
- Lee Paul as Lonnegan's second bodyguard
- Sally Kirkland as Crystal
- Avon Long as Benny Garfield
- Arch Johnson as Combs
- Ed Bakey as Granger
- Brad Sullivan as Cole
- John Quade as Riley
- Larry D. Mann as Clemens
- Leonard Barr as Leonard
- Paulene Myers as Alva Coleman
- Joe Tornatore as Black Gloved Gunman
- Jack Collins as Duke Boudreau
- Tom Spratleyas Curly Jackson
- Kenneth O'Brien as Greer
- Ken Sansom as Western Union Executive
- Ta-Tanisha as Louise
- William "Billy" Benedict as Jimmy
Production
Writing
Screenwriter David S. Ward has said in an interview that he was inspired to write The Sting while researching pickpockets: "Since I had never seen a film about a confidence man before, I said I gotta do this." Daniel Eagan said: "One key to plots about con men is that film goers want to feel they are in on the trick. They don't have to know how a scheme works, and they don't mind a twist or two, but it's important for the story to feature clearly recognizable 'good' and 'bad' characters." It took a year for Ward to fine-tune this aspect of the script and to figure out how much information he could keep from the audience while still making the leads sympathetic. He also imagined an underground brotherhood of thieves who assemble for a big operation and then melt away afterward.[5]
Years later, director Rob Cohen recounted how he found the script in the slush pile when working as a reader for Mike Medavoy, a future studio head, but then an agent. He wrote in his coverage that it was "the great American screenplay and … will make an award-winning, major-cast, major-director film." Medavoy said that he would try to sell it on that recommendation, promising to fire Cohen if he could not. Universal bought it that afternoon, and Cohen keeps the coverage framed on the wall of his office.[6]
Academic David Maurer sued for plagiarism, claiming the screenplay was based too heavily on his 1940 book The Big Con, about real-life tricksters Fred and Charley Gondorff. Universal settled out of court for $600,000, irking Ward, who resented the presumption of guilt implied by an out-of-court settlement done for business expediency.[7]
Writer/producer
Casting
Jack Nicholson was offered the lead role but turned it down.[8] He later said “I had enough business acumen to know The Sting was going to be a huge hit, [but] at the same time Chinatown and The Last Detail were more interesting films to me.”[9]
Newman signed on the film after the producers agreed to give him top billing, $500,000 and a percentage of the profits. His previous five films had been box-office disappointments.[10]
In her 1991 autobiography You'll Never Eat Lunch in This Town Again, producer Julia Phillips writes that Hill wanted Richard Boone to play Lonnegan. Much to her relief, Newman had sent the script to Robert Shaw while shooting The Mackintosh Man in Ireland to ensure his participation in the film. Phillips' book asserts that Shaw was not nominated for a Best Supporting Actor Academy Award because he demanded that his name follow those of Newman and Redford before the film's opening title.[11]
Shaw's character's limp in the film was authentic. Shaw had injured his leg while playing handball shortly before filming began. Director Hill encouraged him to incorporate the limp into his character rather than withdraw from the project.[12]
Principal photography
Hill wanted the film to be reminiscent of movies from the 1930s and watched films from that decade for inspiration. He noticed that most '30s gangster films had no extras. "For instance", Andrew Horton's book The Films of George Roy Hill quotes Hill as saying, "no extras would be used in street scenes in those films:
Along with art director
The movie was filmed on the
Reception
Box office
The film was a box-office smash in 1973 and early 1974, grossing $156 million in the United States and Canada.[17] As of August 2018,[update] it is the 20th highest-grossing film in the United States adjusted for ticket price inflation.[18] Internationally, it grossed $101 million[19] for a worldwide gross of $257 million.
Critical response
Roger Ebert gave the film four out of four stars and called it "one of the most stylish movies of the year".[20] Gene Siskel awarded three-and-a-half stars out of four, calling it "a movie movie that has obviously been made with loving care each and every step of the way."[21] Vincent Canby of The New York Times wrote that the film was "so good-natured, so obviously aware of everything it's up to, even its own picturesque frauds, that I opt to go along with it. One forgives its unrelenting efforts to charm, if only because The Sting itself is a kind of con game, devoid of the poetic aspirations that weighed down Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid."[22] Variety wrote, "George Roy Hill's outstanding direction of David S. Ward's finely-crafted story of multiple deception and surprise ending will delight both mass and class audiences. Extremely handsome production values and a great supporting cast round out the virtues."[23] Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called it "an unalloyed delight, the kind of pure entertainment film that's all the more welcome for having become such a rarity."[24] John Simon wrote that The Sting as a comedy-thriller "works endearingly without a hitch".[25]
Pauline Kael of The New Yorker was less enthusiastic, writing that the film "is meant to be roguishly charming entertainment, and that's how most of the audience takes it, but I found it visually claustrophobic, and totally mechanical. It creeps cranking on, section after section, and it doesn't have a good spirit."[26]
In 2005, the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The Writers Guild of America ranked the screenplay #39 on its list of 101 Greatest Screenplays ever written.[27] On Rotten Tomatoes, The Sting holds a rating of 92% from 101 reviews, with an average rating of 8.3/10. The site's critical consensus reads: "Paul Newman, Robert Redford, and director George Roy Hill prove that charm, humor, and a few slick twists can add up to a great film."[28] On Metacritic, the film has a weighted average score of 83 out of 100, based on 17 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[29]
Awards and nominations
Soundtrack
This section needs additional citations for verification. (October 2020) |
The Sting (Original Motion Picture Soundtrack) | ||||
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Soundtrack album by | ||||
Released | 1974 | |||
Recorded | 1973 | |||
Genre | ||||
Length | 36:59 | |||
Label | MCA Records | |||
Producer | ||||
Marvin Hamlisch chronology | ||||
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Review scores | |
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Source | Rating |
AllMusic | [39] |
The soundtrack album, executive produced by Gil Rodin, includes several of Scott Joplin's ragtime compositions, adapted by Marvin Hamlisch.
According to Joplin scholar Edward A. Berlin, ragtime experienced a revival in the 1970s due to several events: a best-selling recording of Joplin rags on the classical Nonesuch Records label, along with a collection of his music issued by the New York Public Library; the first full staging of Joplin's opera Treemonisha; and a performance of period orchestrations of Joplin's music by a student ensemble of the New England Conservatory of Music, led by Gunther Schuller. "Inspired by Schuller's recording, [Hill] had Marvin Hamlisch score Joplin's music for the film, thereby bringing Joplin to a mass, popular public."[4]
- "Solace" (Joplin) – orchestral version
- "The Entertainer" (Joplin) – orchestral version
- "The Easy Winners" (Joplin)
- "Hooker's Hooker" (Hamlisch)
- "Luther" – same basic tune as "Solace", adapted by Hamlisch as a dirge
- "Pine Apple Rag" / "Gladiolus Rag" medley (Joplin)
- "The Entertainer" (Joplin) – piano version
- "The Glove" (Hamlisch) – a Jazz Age style number; only a short segment was used in the film
- "Little Girl" (Madeline Hyde, Francis Henry) – heard only as a short instrumental segment over a car radio
- "Pine Apple Rag" (Joplin)
- "Merry-Go-Round Music" medley; "band organ.
- "Solace" (Joplin) – piano version
- "The Entertainer" / "The Ragtime Dance" medley (Joplin)
Charts
Weekly charts
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Year-end charts
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Certifications and sales
Region | Certification | Certified units/sales |
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United Kingdom (BPI)[52] | Gold | 100,000^ |
United States (RIAA)[53] | Gold | 500,000^ |
^ Shipments figures based on certification alone. |
Adaptations
Stage
Mark Hollmann and Greg Kotis (music and lyrics), writer Bob Martin, and director John Rando created a stage musical version of the movie. The musical premiered at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn, New Jersey on March 29, 2018. Henry Gondorff was played by Harry Connick Jr., with choreography by Warren Carlyle.[54] The stage musical incorporates Joplin's music, including "The Entertainer".[55]
Novelization
Robert Weverka adapted the film into a full-length novel, The Sting (1974), based on the screenplay by David S. Ward.[56]
Home media
The movie was issued on DVD by Columbia TriStar Home Entertainment in 2000. "If Paul Newman really does retire, he can spend his rocking chair years feeling smug about this," enthused Bruno MacDonald for OK! "The story's not the important thing: what makes it are the quirky soundtrack, the card-sharp dialogue and two superduperstars at their superduperstarriest."[57]
A deluxe DVD – The Sting: Special Edition (part of the Universal Legacy Series) – was released in September 2005. Its "making of" featurette, The Art of the Sting, included interviews with cast and crew.
The film was released on Blu-ray in 2012 as part of Universal's 100th anniversary releases.
The Sting was released on Ultra HD Blu-ray on May 18, 2021.[58]
See also
- List of American films of 1973
- List of highest-grossing films in the United States and Canada
- The Sting II
References
- ^ "The Sting". The Numbers. Archived from the original on November 1, 2013. Retrieved June 4, 2020.
- ^ Variety film review; December 12, 1973, page 16.
- ^ "The Sting". Turner Classic Movies Database. Archived from the original on October 2, 2017. Retrieved February 23, 2016.
- ^ a b Berlin, Edward A. (1996). "Scott Joplin". Classical Net. Archived from the original on May 9, 2008. Retrieved September 8, 2012.
- ISBN 978-0-8264-2977-3. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
- Times-Herald Record. Middletown, NY. Archivedfrom the original on December 24, 2008. Retrieved November 21, 2008.
- ^ Horowitz, Joy (March 15, 1992). "Hollywood Law: Whose Idea Is It, Anyway?". The New York Times. Archived from the original on August 20, 2022. Retrieved August 20, 2022.
- ISBN 978-0-3933-5097-5. Archivedfrom the original on August 29, 2023. Retrieved October 19, 2021.
- ^ Chilton, Martin (December 27, 2023). "Paul Newman's greatest trick: How the Sting took Hollywood for a ride". The Telegraph.
- ISBN 978-1-5897-9438-2.
- ISBN 978-0-3945-7574-2. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
- ^ "AFI Movie Club: THE STING". American Film Institute. July 6, 2020. Archived from the original on March 27, 2023. Retrieved March 27, 2023.
- ISBN 978-0-7864-4684-1. Archivedfrom the original on April 21, 2022. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
- ^ Blake, Lindsay (January 16, 2014). "Scene It Before: The Santa Monica Looff Hippodrome from 'The Sting'". Los Angeles. Archived from the original on August 14, 2017. Retrieved August 13, 2017.
- ^ "LaSalle Street Station". Metra. Archived from the original on September 24, 2014. Retrieved July 10, 2014.
- ^ "Movies Filmed in Chicago". City of Chicago. Archived from the original on July 14, 2014. Retrieved July 10, 2014.
- ^ "The Sting". Box Office Mojo. Retrieved December 31, 2023.
- ^ "All Time Box Office Adjusted for Ticket Price Inflation". Box Office Mojo. Archived from the original on June 7, 2014. Retrieved May 19, 2011.
- Daily Variety. February 6, 1990. p. 122.
- ^ Ebert, Roger (December 27, 1973). "The Sting". Chicago Sun-Times. Archived from the original on December 30, 2018. Retrieved November 26, 2018.
- ^ Siskel, Gene (December 28, 1973). "A return to the basics called care and skill". Chicago Tribune. Section 2, p. 3.
- ^ Canby, Vincent (December 26, 1973). "Film:1930's Confidence Men Are Heroes of 'Sting'". The New York Times. p. 60. Archived from the original on June 26, 2020. Retrieved June 25, 2020.
- ^ Murphy, A. D. (December 12, 1973). "The Sting". Variety. Archived from the original on June 5, 2020. Retrieved June 25, 2020.
- ^ Thomas, Kevin (December 23, 1973). "'The Sting 'Reunites a Winning Combination". Los Angeles Times. Calendar, p. 26.
- ISBN 978-0-5175-4471-6.
- ^ Kael, Pauline (December 31, 1973). "The Current Cinema". The New Yorker. pp. 49–50.
- ^ "101 Greatest Screenplays". Writers Guild of America West. Archived from the original on August 13, 2006. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
- ^ "The Sting". Rotten Tomatoes. Archived from the original on August 6, 2022. Retrieved August 8, 2022.
- ^ The Sting Reviews, Metacritic, archived from the original on July 6, 2022, retrieved June 18, 2022
- ^ "The 46th Academy Awards (1974) Nominees and Winners". Oscars.org. Archived from the original on March 15, 2015. Retrieved December 31, 2011.
- ^ "The Sting". Movies & TV Dept. The New York Times. March 20, 2009. Archived from the original on March 21, 2009. Retrieved December 29, 2008.
- ^ "26th DGA Awards". Directors Guild of America Awards. Archived from the original on November 22, 2021. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
- HFPA. Archivedfrom the original on December 21, 2022. Retrieved June 3, 2021.
- ^ "1973 Award Winners". National Board of Review. Archived from the original on July 24, 2021. Retrieved July 5, 2021.
- ^ "Film Hall of Fame Inductees: Productions". Online Film & Television Association. Archived from the original on May 11, 2020. Retrieved August 15, 2021.
- ^ "1975 - 1st Annual People's Choice Awards". Archived from the original on April 18, 2016. Retrieved November 10, 2015.
- ^ Madigan, Nick (March 1, 1998). "PGA lauds Daly, Semel with its Golden Laurels". Variety. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved September 22, 2017.
- ^ "Awards Winners". Writers Guild of America. Archived from the original on December 5, 2012. Retrieved June 6, 2010.
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- ^ "Top RPM Albums: Issue 5015a". RPM. Library and Archives Canada. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
- ^ "Dutchcharts.nl – Soundtrack / Marvin Hamlisch – The Sting" (in Dutch). Hung Medien. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
- GfK Entertainment Charts. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
- ^ "Norwegiancharts.com – Soundtrack / Marvin Hamlisch – The Sting". Hung Medien. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
- ^ "Official Albums Chart Top 100". Official Charts Company. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
- ^ "Soundtrack Chart History (Billboard 200)". Billboard. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
- ISSN 0008-7289. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
- .
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- ^ "Billboard 200 Albums - Year-End". Billboard. Archived from the original on April 20, 2021. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
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- ^ "British album certifications – The Sting - Ost – Original Soundtrack". British Phonographic Industry. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
- ^ "American album certifications – Marvin Hamlisch – The Sting". Recording Industry Association of America. Retrieved May 16, 2022.
- ^ "The Sting". newyorkcitytheatre.com. Archived from the original on October 26, 2017.
- ^ Clement, Olivia (February 13, 2018). "Harry Connick Jr. to Star in Broadway-Bound Musical 'The Sting'". Playbill. Archived from the original on February 15, 2018.
- ISBN 0553082728
- ^ MacDonald, Bruno (May 19, 2000). "Film & Video: DVD sales releases". OK!. No. 213.
- ^ "The Sting 4K Blu-ray". Blu-ray News. March 10, 2021. Archived from the original on April 14, 2021. Retrieved April 14, 2021.
External links
- The Sting at IMDb
- The Sting at the TCM Movie Database
- The Sting at AllMovie
- The Sting at Rotten Tomatoes