This might have been a better and more profound film about maturity and honor had the script "dealt" more thoroughly on the only two characters who really matter: "The Kid," Eric Stoner (Steve McQueen," and "The Man," Lancey Howard (Edward G. Robinson). This is their story, and there isn't enough of it. Ultimately, after the big poker shootout, we're left to wonder what it was all about. It ain't just cards and money, is it?
The script, credited to Ring Lardner Jr. and Terry Southern, from the novel by Richard Jessup, is too much here-and-now. Why is Howard "The Man" among stud poker players, and why is Stoner held in such high regard by the New Orleans gamblers?. Robinson is his usual professional self and does well with what script he has, but I wanted to know more about him – e.g., what happened in his earlier years to lead him to tell Stoner to avoid a long-term relationship with a woman?
Same for The Kid. Aside from the opening sequence, McQueen the action figure has little to do in "The Cincinnati Kid." I don't recall ever hearing what he had to do with Cincinnati, either, but that early sequence – a fight with a sore loser in a small-stakes poker game – does hint at the Kid's origins. It would have been nice to know more about how he acquired the skills needed to take on The Man. McQueen is one of my favorite film actors, and he's not bad here. But the The Kid is a younger man (mid-20s rather than md-30s), talented and capable but not as entirely confident in himself as McQueen usually came across.
Other than the shallow script, "The Cincinnati Kid" has some other serious flaws. Aside from a few old cars and some of the costumes, it would be difficult to place this film in the 1930s (I'm guessing it's supposed to 1935-36). McQueen, Rip Torn, and some of other males look like they've just done a fashion spread for a 1964 issue of "Esquire." Anachronistic art direction and costume design were common problems in 1950s-60s Hollywood movies set in the 1920s-30s, though that would change drastically two years later with the work of art director Dean Tavoularis and costume designer Theadora van Runkle on "Bonnie and Clyde." The filmmakers here give us some vague notion that this is The Great Depression, and of course everyone is supposed to know that the times were tough; but there's little of that desperation conveyed on the screen. (By way of contrast, check out another film set in Depression New Orleans, "Hard Times," Walter Hill's first directorial achievement, from 1975, to see the impact of "Bonnie and Clyde.")
The writers put some interesting supporting characters into the film. Tuesday Weld really steals the picture, as the girlfriend McQueen loves but can't commit to. Jeff Corey and Cab Calloway have quirky little roles as gamblers, but others -- Joan Blondell as washed-up female cardshark, Jack Weston as a greedy, overconfident gambler – are predictable and stereotypical. Rip Torn does the villainous, decadent Southerner bit that he was turning into a career. Ann-Margret was a big star at the time and seemed to revel in playing the sex-kitten, but her presence in the movie seems more calculated for box-office appeal than for logical casting as Karl Malden's greedy wife, a rather secondary role at that. Malden has been a good actor for certain types of tough, masculine roles; but I couldn't believe that his "Shooter" -- a middle-aged gambler with integrity but without much charm or future -- would attract into marriage a hedonistic and unprincipled babe like Ann-Margret's Melba. Shooter is an important character in the film -– Stoner's trusted friend who is blackmailed into betraying The Kid's desire for an honest and straight-up confrontation with The Man. We need to know more about how Shooter and The Kid got together and came to trust each other.
As noted elsewhere, this film tried to trade off the popularity of "The Hustler" as well as the box-office appeal of McQueen and Ann-Margret. The poker game is the climax of "The Cincinnati Kid," of course, a prolonged shootout in which no blood is shed but a lot of people get hurt. I am no poker player, but the game held my attention down to the last hand. One guy has to lose: youthful talent or aged experience? And when it's over, what of it? "The Cincinnati Kid" offers only a glimpse of the loser's future, and a rather predictable one at that. Most viewers will find "The Cincinnati Kid" entertaining enough for one look, but it is not the kind of film you'll want to see often unless you are a die-hard fan of McQueen, Robinson, or five-card stud.
BTW: The "French" movie that Tuesday Weld's character talks about early in "The Cincinnati Kid" is a real flick – "La Kermesse heroique," (The Heroic Village Fair), which was released in the United States as "Carnival in Flanders." This 1935 film (a hint to the historic timing of "The Cincinnati Kid") was directed by Belgian-born Jacques Feyder, from a story by Charles Spaak, and was highly honored, winning the Grand Prix du Cinema Francaise and the Best Foreign Film awards from the New York Film Critics' Circle and the National Board of Review in the United States. It was warmly praised as a satire on European militarism and politics in the 1930s – Nazi Germany at first approved of it, then banned it when World War II started – but also came to be seen by some during and after the war as an endorsement of collaboration with an occupying enemy. The Kid's question to his girlfriend, "What good is honor if your dead?," might have come right out of Feyder's film (which I finally got to view in 2009).
The script, credited to Ring Lardner Jr. and Terry Southern, from the novel by Richard Jessup, is too much here-and-now. Why is Howard "The Man" among stud poker players, and why is Stoner held in such high regard by the New Orleans gamblers?. Robinson is his usual professional self and does well with what script he has, but I wanted to know more about him – e.g., what happened in his earlier years to lead him to tell Stoner to avoid a long-term relationship with a woman?
Same for The Kid. Aside from the opening sequence, McQueen the action figure has little to do in "The Cincinnati Kid." I don't recall ever hearing what he had to do with Cincinnati, either, but that early sequence – a fight with a sore loser in a small-stakes poker game – does hint at the Kid's origins. It would have been nice to know more about how he acquired the skills needed to take on The Man. McQueen is one of my favorite film actors, and he's not bad here. But the The Kid is a younger man (mid-20s rather than md-30s), talented and capable but not as entirely confident in himself as McQueen usually came across.
Other than the shallow script, "The Cincinnati Kid" has some other serious flaws. Aside from a few old cars and some of the costumes, it would be difficult to place this film in the 1930s (I'm guessing it's supposed to 1935-36). McQueen, Rip Torn, and some of other males look like they've just done a fashion spread for a 1964 issue of "Esquire." Anachronistic art direction and costume design were common problems in 1950s-60s Hollywood movies set in the 1920s-30s, though that would change drastically two years later with the work of art director Dean Tavoularis and costume designer Theadora van Runkle on "Bonnie and Clyde." The filmmakers here give us some vague notion that this is The Great Depression, and of course everyone is supposed to know that the times were tough; but there's little of that desperation conveyed on the screen. (By way of contrast, check out another film set in Depression New Orleans, "Hard Times," Walter Hill's first directorial achievement, from 1975, to see the impact of "Bonnie and Clyde.")
The writers put some interesting supporting characters into the film. Tuesday Weld really steals the picture, as the girlfriend McQueen loves but can't commit to. Jeff Corey and Cab Calloway have quirky little roles as gamblers, but others -- Joan Blondell as washed-up female cardshark, Jack Weston as a greedy, overconfident gambler – are predictable and stereotypical. Rip Torn does the villainous, decadent Southerner bit that he was turning into a career. Ann-Margret was a big star at the time and seemed to revel in playing the sex-kitten, but her presence in the movie seems more calculated for box-office appeal than for logical casting as Karl Malden's greedy wife, a rather secondary role at that. Malden has been a good actor for certain types of tough, masculine roles; but I couldn't believe that his "Shooter" -- a middle-aged gambler with integrity but without much charm or future -- would attract into marriage a hedonistic and unprincipled babe like Ann-Margret's Melba. Shooter is an important character in the film -– Stoner's trusted friend who is blackmailed into betraying The Kid's desire for an honest and straight-up confrontation with The Man. We need to know more about how Shooter and The Kid got together and came to trust each other.
As noted elsewhere, this film tried to trade off the popularity of "The Hustler" as well as the box-office appeal of McQueen and Ann-Margret. The poker game is the climax of "The Cincinnati Kid," of course, a prolonged shootout in which no blood is shed but a lot of people get hurt. I am no poker player, but the game held my attention down to the last hand. One guy has to lose: youthful talent or aged experience? And when it's over, what of it? "The Cincinnati Kid" offers only a glimpse of the loser's future, and a rather predictable one at that. Most viewers will find "The Cincinnati Kid" entertaining enough for one look, but it is not the kind of film you'll want to see often unless you are a die-hard fan of McQueen, Robinson, or five-card stud.
BTW: The "French" movie that Tuesday Weld's character talks about early in "The Cincinnati Kid" is a real flick – "La Kermesse heroique," (The Heroic Village Fair), which was released in the United States as "Carnival in Flanders." This 1935 film (a hint to the historic timing of "The Cincinnati Kid") was directed by Belgian-born Jacques Feyder, from a story by Charles Spaak, and was highly honored, winning the Grand Prix du Cinema Francaise and the Best Foreign Film awards from the New York Film Critics' Circle and the National Board of Review in the United States. It was warmly praised as a satire on European militarism and politics in the 1930s – Nazi Germany at first approved of it, then banned it when World War II started – but also came to be seen by some during and after the war as an endorsement of collaboration with an occupying enemy. The Kid's question to his girlfriend, "What good is honor if your dead?," might have come right out of Feyder's film (which I finally got to view in 2009).