The Oscar Project #46: The Sting (1973)

by Chris Marshall:

The Sting seems in many ways like a “forgotten” Best Picture winner, but maybe that’s all in my head. Ever since I memorized the Best Picture winners in order for reasons too boring to mention here, it tends to trip me up. All too often I think of it as “the movie that won between the Godfathers.”

It deserves a better reputation than that, of course, and I realize that for many people, it has one. I mean, it’s Rich Eisen’s favorite movie, and that has to be worth something. And it’s ranked #100 in the IMDB Top 250.

Ok, so maybe it is all in my head. Nevertheless, I do feel it’s talked about less than the surrounding winners. If you’re not familiar at all with the movie, it’s set in the 1930s, with Robert Redford and Paul Newman playing con men who are trying to pull off the scam of the century. I’ll say nothing more about the plot because watching everything unfold at the end was the great pleasure of the film, and I think it would lose a great deal if it was revealed.

I normally think of the director, George Roy Hill, as the man who made this film and the previous Newman-Redford collaboration, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. But after doing some research (reading his Wikipedia page), I realize that he actually had quite a distinguished career outside of these two movies. He directed 14 films, eight of which were nominated for Oscars. In total, his movies garnered 37 Oscar nominations and 13 wins. Not bad. Even some of the movies that weren’t nominated are fairly well known: Slaughterhouse-Five, Slap Shot, and Funny Farm among them.

And now for something completely different. I’m a wrestling fan. I used to keep this as a deep, dark secret, but I’m much more open about acknowledging it now. Anyway, within the wrestling world, the term “mark” is used to describe a fan that either does not know or does not acknowledge that they are watching a scripted show.

There are also “smarks,” a portmanteau of “smart” and “mark,” which is used (typically[1]) to refer to fans who closely monitor the backstage, behind-the-scenes goings-on of wrestling organizations. They want to know what’s going to happen before it happens.

But why do I bring this up? As I mentioned, Redford and Newman play con men, and their victims are referred to as marks. This is the historical origin of the wrestling term, dating back to wrestling’s carnival days, when the “reality” of professional wrestling was one of its selling points. They had to convince the marks that what they were seeing was not determined in advance if they wanted to keep making money.

The George Clooney and Brad Pitt of their day.

The point of all this is that I realized the same dichotomy exists among movie fans. It’s not that anybody (I hope) believes that what happens in movies is real. It’s that there are people who watch movies not wanting to know what happens next, and there are people who watch and constantly try to figure out where the plot is going to go. As a member of the former group, it can be frustrating watching a movie when somebody else is guessing the outcome, even if they turn out not to be right.

I’m constantly surprised by movies, and when I’m not, it tends to be disappointing, like the film has failed in its goal. So when I watched The Sting, I, to use some more wrestling parlance, “marked out.” I had no idea that the end would play out like it did, and it was fun when I found out.

This is the reason I only watch trailers when I’m sitting in the theater. I want to go in as blind as possible. This isn’t a criticism of people who do enjoy watching and analyzing trailers; I’m just wired differently. They’re smarks, and I’m the lowly mark. When the film says jump, I say, “How high?” I realize that when I watch The Sting, I’m not just watching a film about con men. I’m being conned. And I’m totally ok with that.

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[1] I’m aware that there tends to be a negative connotation to this word, but I’m using it in the most neutral, literal sense.