This Paul Newman Crime Drama Captured the '60s Better Than Any Other (original) (raw)

Published May 7, 2023, 9:30 AM EDT

Aidan Bryant is an award winning writer, filmmaker, and photographer originally from Long Island, New York, and currently based in Chicago, Illinois. He has written extensively about art history, American politics, cinema, and has won awards for his coverage of the COVID-19 pandemic, and labor organizing. His favorite films range from Martin Scorsese's Goodfellas to Barbara Kopple's American Dream, and his favorite TV show is Seinfeld. Aidan brings a deep knowledge of film history, as well as a variety of historical perspectives into his writing for Collider. Beyond film and television, he is an die hard New York Knicks fan, collects VHS tapes, newspapers, and American photo books, and hopes to one day appear on Jeopardy!. His favorite place in Chicago is the Music Box Theater, the best movie theater in the world period.He is currently looking into buying a Laserdisc player. One of these days he is going to get organizized.

The late 1960s were a radical time for the world, and therefore a radical time for cinema. The Civil Rights Act was passed, student movements raged in the US and Europe, leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X were assassinated, and the Vietnam War continued to weigh on the minds of everyone heading into the pivotal 1968 US presidential election. This period of time led to some of the most groundbreaking films ever produced. Agnes Varda's_Black Panthers,_ Haskell Wexler's_Medium Cool,Michelangelo Antonioni'sBlow-Up,_ and even unexpected films like George Romero's Night of the Living Dead all reflected the rage and alienation that seeped through every facet of life at that time. A film that reflects these same feelings, yet is often left out of this discussion is Stuart Rosenberg's 1967 Cool Hand Luke, starring Paul Newman in one of his most iconic turns. However, the film is often reduced to its setting, memorable lines, and scenes (to the point we see it parodied in Toy Story 3), rather than evaluated at a deeper level.

Paul Newman Tackles a Familiar Subject in 'Cool Hand Luke'

cool hand Luke printing camp, digging holes and laughing

Image via Warner Bros.-Seven Arts

This is not to say that Cool Hand Luke is iconic for the wrong reasons. It's a tale as old as time, a man thrown into a world he doesn't fit into, and the inevitable clash with authority that follows. Combine that with a razor-sharp script full of classic lines, a deep supporting cast (a young Harry Dean Stanton in particular), and a scene of a man eating 50 hard-boiled eggs in an hour, and you've got a classic on your hands. Paul Newman in particular shines as the titular character, showing a laid-back, quiet coolness that is what is most memorable about his performance in the film. Yet, it's those quieter moments where his performance really begins to synthesize into an all-time great effort on his part. When we meet Luke, he is drunkenly cutting the heads off parking meters and is imprisoned for two years for his crime. When we find out he is a former war hero, it seems to mean nothing to him. "A way to pass the time", he says to the warden. We see more of the same when asked why he's in prison. "Settling an old score". Luke resembles many people, both of his generation after World War II, to the people coming back from Vietnam when the film came out, to people returning from war now. He couldn't find a place to settle in as everyone else could. His mother says as much when she visits him in prison. Newman portrays this with an almost soft, humbleness that hides what he's really feeling. That outer shell is impenetrable for the first half of the film, as we see Luke begin to rally his fellow prisoners and become a man of the people.

This all comes crashing down in the most memorable and impactful scene of the entire film. After the death of his mother is relayed to him, Luke finds solace in his bunk, with the rest of the prisoners seen behind him at the end of the jailhouse. As rain falls, Luke begins to play the banjo and sing "Plastic Jesus", a folk parody song. Yet Newman sings it like it's the saddest song in the world, tears streaming down his face as he mourns his mother. It is a shockingly vulnerable moment in a film most known for being a bit of a stereotypical man's movie. Prison did not break Luke, it was the cruelty of life that hurt him. He was broken before he ever stepped foot in there. In the following scene, we see another important line between Luke and the Warden, as the Warden puts him in "The Box" to make a prison break to see his dead mother impossible. The Warden says to him "Sorry, Luke. I'm just doing my job. You gotta appreciate that." Luke responds "Nah. Calling it your job don't make it right, Boss.". With Luke now fully alienated, we see the rest of the film come into motion.

'Cool Hand Luke's Influence on Cinema

Cool Hand Luke seems a bit of an outlier to other notable prison films. It is not about an escape, although Luke does escape from prison three times throughout the film. While we see some standard prison fare in his fight with Dragline, the poker scene, and the car washing scene, Newman seems to be more concerned with portraying Luke's struggle with the world, and more importantly himself. When the other prisoners begin to become his disciples, Luke leans into it almost, sending them a photo of himself with two women in a nightclub after his second escape attempt. He is an aspirational figure to them. When he is thrown back into prison, he rejects this status, saying the picture was a fake, and that he isn't anybody. It is very hard to discuss Newman's performance without discussing the Christlike way he is represented in the film, some as obvious as laying in a crucifixion pose after eating 50 eggs, which you could call a miracle I suppose. The egg scene and the scene of him rejecting his followers really resonated with a performance that came over 30 years after it, Willem Dafoe as Jesus in Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ. Both play reluctant saviors, a life thrust upon them that they see no way of fitting into. There is anger in them at a life they had no choice in. You can draw a very squiggly line between the two performances, one that makes the allusions to Christianity in Cool Hand Luke more than just imagery, and into a much deeper connection.

Luke was handed a life that he had no way of fitting into, and those feelings manifest in his endless battle against authority, whether it be those parking meters, the Warden, or God. These themes of alienation and rage would go on to shape cinema as a whole in a way never seen before, with the late 60s being the genesis of many of the most popular and revered filmmakers we know today. Yet, Cool Hand Luke is seen popularly as another prison movie with some fun lines, and a typically excellent performance by Paul Newman. It has fallen out of step with the more respected films of the period. While not as flashy as others, Cool Hand Luke represents the late 60s in a way no other major film of the period really did. It is a quiet, meditative character study, punctuated by scenes that can be just as sad as they are funny. Newman in particular deserves a lot more credit for his work in the film. He carries it on his back, his performance subtle, yet full of intrigue at the same time. What would later become an archetype, seen in films like Taxi Driver and Paris, Texas, takes the man who cannot fit in and brings a level of maturity and depth to the role that makes it enduring even today. He'll be a star forever, but Newman shines the brightest in Cool Hand Luke.