The Sting

 And this week's Friday night movie has been... The Sting!

Original image located here. Accessed 5th July 2024

Best Picture Oscar winner no.: 46 (1973)

Given the 1970s are regarded as one of, if not the, strongest decades of Best Picture winners, it does raise an interesting question: Which of the ten winners is the weakest? 
Such a question is by no means a slight against the movie in question. It just sits besides some titans that would easily overshadow it. So would The Sting be the weak point of the 70s? 

Well I will admit it certainly stands on it's own. Whereas 70s cinemagoers embraced the New Hollywood movement and cynicism, The Sting is a deliberate throwback to the 1930s style of film-making. And it's not just in the aesthetic: the structure and direction is undeniably lifted from an earlier, long-gone era of film-making. If anything this seems to be a flipside to The French Connection: if that movie embodies the realism and cynicism of New Hollywood, then The Sting seems oddly resistant to them.  
But that is by no means a bad thing: This is a solid crime caper based around building up a con-game to take down a crime boss. Certainly the narrative is bogged down by multiple double-crosses but I do admire the effort gone into making this movie. After all, it has the most compelling poker game I have ever seen on celluloid.