There are only a handful of movie characters so real that the audience refers to them as touchstones. Fast Eddie Felson is one of them. The pool shark played by Paul Newman in "The Hustler" (1961) is indelible--given weight because the film is not about his victory in the final pool game, but about his defeat by pool, by life, and by his lack of character. This is one of the few American movies in which the hero wins by surrendering, by accepting reality instead of his dreams.

There may not be much depth to the hero, whom Paul Newman violently plays with a master's control of tart expressions and bitterly passionate attitudes. Nor may there be quite enough clarity in the complicated nature of the girl, whom Piper Laurie wrings into a pathetic and eventually exhausted little rag. But they're both appealing people, he in a truculent, helpless way and she in the manner of a courageous, confused and uncompromising child...."The Hustler" is not a picture to take the children to see, but it is one a father might wisely recommend to a restless teen-age son.An appropriately nervous jazz score keeps the eardrums sharp.

Provocative and powerful, The Hustler is an odd and serious picture that will have some fanatical admirers — as it should, because the Robert Rossen production is an important and, in its way, satisfying experience. It is, however, well outside the usual Hollywood story, and 20th-Fox will have to do some strenuous and sustained promotion if it is to be a general success....Rossen, of course, is not interested in trying to popularize pool or show that it can be an intriguing spectator sport. His theme is success and the degrading, demoralizing effects it can have when the glitter of the goal so dazzles the eyes of the contestant that he becomes morally blind.