George Roy Hill
La Stangata

Elegant, clean, and light. Three adjectives to describe a fresh and cheeky comedy despite the careful historical reconstruction and the setting, that of 1930s Chicago, impossible to keep off the scene.

"The Sting" has its small role in the history of cinema for various reasons, certainly the intelligence with which the plot is constructed, the cards on the table are shown but only up to a certain point. It doesn't have great pretensions but boasts a pair of well-matched actors, Redford and Newman (together again after "Butch Cassidy"), and a great actor perhaps somewhat forgotten, Robert Shaw. Redford and Newman are perfect in their roles as swindlers attempting a major con against a powerful New York boss, Shaw "It's useless being an artist if you have to live like a clerk". The story is simple, yet the naivety with which the two conmen build their "sting" surprises and how the mobster gets tricked, all of it, in its crystal-clear genius, almost farcical. Robert Roy Hill handles this game of tricks, more or less revealed, with great skill, it is a comedy and it makes one laugh but it also prompts some reflection on the USA of those years. Poverty, a country in constant change, with a thousand faces and a thousand stories. And who knows how many people just like Henry Gondorff and Johnny Hooker tried to survive through small cons and thefts dreaming of the big hit, the sting.

If you've never seen it, it's a shame, and perhaps it's time to let yourself be pleasantly carried away by the adventures of these two scoundrels to the ragtime notes of Scott Joplin.