George Roy Hill
La Stangata

Joliet, Illinois, Great Depression.

Every trick becomes useful to get by. A few dollars or a pair of shiny shoes to pawn to avoid biting the dust. Luther and Johnny Hooker (Robert Redford), two clever swindlers, carry out, with the package trick, a scam against a well-stuffed sap. The move succeeds, and the loot is enormous, enough to retire old Luther, now accustomed to scams. Too bad the sap is a man of Doyle Lonnegan (Robert Shaw), theoretically a banker and practically a gangster, one who usually kills for pride. The affront is serious, the revenge is immediate, and Luther is thrown from the balcony of his house, forcing him into the status of semi-orphanhood and widowhood against his will.

Hooker, wanted by detective Snyder to be arrested and by Lonnegan to be annihilated, is forced to hide, swearing, however, that the murder of his old friend will not go unpunished. He then turns to Henry Gondorff (Paul Newman), the best con man in the United States and great friend and pupil of the late Luther, currently an anonymous manager, due to the FBI, of a horse carousel with an attached bar and brothel. No murders planned. Hooker's desire is to bring Lonnegan to his knees, also because he wouldn't have the courage to kill him, a fear well highlighted by the clatter of the elevated train in a masterful fragment.

Gondorff, with a nod on the nose, calls upon people averaging 9 and in no time rents a decrepit former sub-pool hall to turn it into a high-class horse betting agency. The boss is to be swindled with the old telegraph trick, which consists of reading, as if live, the results of recently concluded races, allowing bets on a horse that's already victorious. Meanwhile, the bait needs to be set to catch the big fish. Lonnegan plays poker, skillfully cheating, on a train running the New York-Chicago route, where some idiots take the same train just to play with him. Gondorff poses as Shaw, a bookmaker, and Hooker as Kelly, his right-hand man. Lonnegan bites, loses a block of cash, and gets dragged into the Gondorff-Shaw agency.

This is where the big con begins. Hooker-Kelly makes the boss believe he wants to swindle his master Gondorff-Shaw and explains the trick to him. The first bet works, the second too but partially, as Lonnegan "is made to arrive late for the bet." The third will be the decisive one: $500,000 on a placed horse. Meanwhile, the FBI tracks down Snyder to catch Gondorff through Hooker. As a result, the latter finds himself between a rock and a hard place. Who to betray? Lonnegan or Gondorff? The choice will be illustrated by one of the greatest endings in cinema history, which I leave pending to encourage viewing this exceptional comedy.

A terrific film directed by George Roy Hill, already the director of "Butch Cassidy" featuring the same Redford-Newman duo, and as they say, never change a winning team. Excellently photographed by Robert Surtees, already celebrated in Ben-Hur, who often uses brown, sepia, and green, masterfully combined, to highlight the squalor of the slums of a great metropolis in the '30s. And the soundtrack? How many of us have whistled to "The Entertainer"? How many of us have been moved by "Solace"? The ragtime of Scott Joplin, resurrected for the occasion, is as apt as ever. Seven Oscars all deserved for a truly formidable work.