Photo by Jordan Coll / SOC Images.
A film that lends out its own dapper caricature of a 1930s Chicagoesque scene titled “The Sting” was featured at Jersey City’s Art House Productions, which is an art space that’s been bringing out cinema admirers on a monthly basis.
The event was moderated by Jonathan Bernstein, a professor at New York University at the Tisch School of the Arts, who gave opening remarks at the screening and spoke to Slice of Culture in an exclusive interview.
“It is more about us collectively trying to become and—I include myself—more wiser and sensitive viewers of the vocabulary of cinema,” he said, echoing the need to bring back vintage films to the public eye.
“There is an infinite amount of wisdom that can come from having everyone in attendance, essentially meeting and learning from each other’s perspectives.”
A projector illuminated the dark room and helped brighten up a room full of film enthusiasts. “The Sting” is set in the Depression era in Chicago. The movie ties in two professional comrades played by Paul Newman (Henry “Shaw” Gondorff) and Robert Redford (Johnny Hooker). The event was strung together by the Classic Cinema Club, a group of film lovers with a monthly event bringing classical films back to the screen.
Throughout the film’s timeline, two protagonists plot against a ruthless mob boss, Doyle Lonnegan, casted by the actor Robert Shaw, an Irish-American crime boss who operates in New York expanding his crime syndicate group.
The film predicates itself on an entire falsehood. Nobody seems to trust each other, and the film itself attributes that same theme. The audience believes it is fully in on the con—only to discover it has been misled too.
Sharing an almost telepathic chemistry, the two protagonists venture out in the streets of 1930s Chicago, dealing with a verge of betting parlor scheme scenes mixed in with untrusted romance, with the musical score of Scott Joplin “The Entertainer” playing in the background.
The film is broken down in various stages of the con—a technique that the film’s late Director George Roy Hill achieves—maintaining a kind of off-balance pacing that keeps you perpetually guessing what’s next. The film is divided into several acts: The Set-Up, The Hook, The Tale, The Wire, The Shut-Out, The Sting and The Tale, ending with a horse carousel scene.
Shaw Gondorff is an all-cool authority in the streets—a seasoned professional, unhurried, seemingly in control hiding from the FBI in the film. Redford’s Hooker is restless, impulsive and hungry; a young man in over his head who gradually grows into the film’s moral centre.
Robert Shaw plays Lonnegan who is a proud, dangerous and genuinely formidable character. The con only works because of who he is. Shaw brings a controlled menace to the role that makes every scene he occupies feel volatile, and his humiliation, when it finally comes with the con, is all the more satisfying for how convincingly he has threatened it.
Released on Christmas Day 1973, “The Sting” was a critical and commercial triumph, which had a gross revenue of $156 million, winning out seven of its 10 Oscar nominations including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Original Screenplay.
The screenplay by David S. Ward was inspired by real life cons documented in David Maurer’s 1940 book “The Big Con: The Story of the Confidence Man.”
Coming out of the 1930s-centric film, attendees returned back to reality at Art House Productions, a nonprofit organization located on 345 Marin Boulevard in Downtown Jersey City. The organization caters to a venue of creatives, musicals, festivals and community artwork founded in 2001. Art House Productions is also celebrating its 25th anniversary of hosting art-driven programs, which started at the wake of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, according to the studio’s site.
And locals have been coming to the space ever since.
Rebecca Missel has lived in Jersey City long enough to know what gets lost when a neighborhood stops making room for its artists. So when Art House Productions began programming classic films in an intimate, community-rooted setting, she paid attention.
“There’s something that happens when you watch a film in a space like this,” said Missel, a longtime Jersey City resident who has become a regular at the nonprofit’s screenings. “It’s not passive. You’re sitting with your neighbors. You’re accountable to the room.”
After “The Sting” showing, members of the crowd had a Q&A session.
Bernstein also noted that the Jersey City production studio recently showed classic 1980s film “Die Hard,” and renowned action film director Steven de Souza, who screenplayed the film, attended the screening via Zoom.
If you want to check out classic films featuring, you could head on over to the site with their events year around.
