The clip belongs to the movie The Hustler (Robert Rossen, 1961) an adult story about life and love, greed, and self-destruction of isolated characters but also a story about conscience and redemption. The clip reproduces the first meeting about Eddie (Paul Newman) and Sarah (Piper Laurie), anticipating the romantic relationship of the film. The director uses both widescreen and black and white to produce a realistic atmosphere and highlight the isolation of the characters in their relationship. This essay analyzes the use of those devises in three different moments of the clip and how they guess the dénouement of the plot through the depiction of the characters.
In the entire movie, the use of the widescreen in addition to the performance of the actors emphasizes the isolation of the characters (Bordwell, 1985 p.20), but this is especially relevant with Eddie and Sarah, so, when their first meeting occurs in the bus-station´s cafeteria, Sarah is sitting on the left of the screen and Eddie sits opposite, on the right, moreover, the use of deep focus increases the sense of a isolation and distance between them. On the other hand, later, in the tavern they are again sitting at a table with benches, they are little closer, framed by the back of the tavern benches, but the distance between them is evident, materialized by the table, in spite of this, in the third moment of the clip, they try a sexual relationship. Now, they are in the center of the screen, although the