George Roy Hill (The Sting) The Sting

George Roy Hill directed The Sting at the peak of his commercial powers and the nadir of his critical reputation. A Yale-educated musician and Korean War fighter pilot who came to film through Broadway, Hill made two of the ten highest-grossing American films of the 1970s and was never taken seriously as an artist by the people who decided such things. His Oscar for The Sting is one of the clearest cases in Academy history of the industry honoring craft that critics dismissed as impersonal.

Hill saw himself as an administrator, not an auteur

Hill's working philosophy put him at odds with the auteur theory that dominated 1970s film criticism. He did not believe the director's personality should be visible on screen.

"I find publicity distasteful, and I don't think it does the picture any good to focus on the director." — George Roy Hill, The Films of George Roy Hill (1983) (book, not available online)

He shunned chat shows, kept press off his sets, and declined to cultivate a public persona. The result was a body of work that reviewers called "impersonal" or "lacking in stylistic trademarks" -- charges that Hill would have taken as compliments. His approach to The Sting was to serve Ward's screenplay and let the ensemble carry the story, which mirrors how the con men in the film subordinate ego to the operation.

Hill understood Newman and Redford's chemistry better than anyone

Hill was the only director to work with both Paul Newman and Robert Redford twice, on Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and The Sting. He articulated their appeal with unusual precision.

"What puts Newman and Redford over so well together is as much chemistry as acting. When they're in the same frame something exciting happens even when they're not talking or even moving." — George Roy Hill, TCM (2010)

Hill enforced discipline on set with methods that reflected his military background. Newman recalled the consequences of tardiness: "If you weren't on time, he'd take you up in his airplane. Scare the bejesus out of us." Hill had held a pilot's license since age sixteen and flew combat missions in both World War II and Korea. (wikipedia)

Hill built a 1930s movie, not just a 1930s story

The key creative decision on The Sting was not merely to set the film in the Depression but to make it look and feel like a film from the Depression. Hill worked with cinematographer Robert Surtees (The Sting) and art director Henry Bumstead and the Period Design to devise a visual scheme of muted browns and maroons, iris-shot fadeouts, editing wipes, and a vintage Universal Pictures logo -- all conventions of 1930s cinema that contemporary audiences would recognize as period markers even if they couldn't name the techniques.

"The film's climax -- depicting the elaborate confidence scheme as a collective enterprise -- subtly mirrors the old studio system's collaborative efficiency." — Sean Keeley, The Dispatch (2023)

Hill deliberately kept extras sparse in street scenes, mimicking the visual language of classic gangster films rather than attempting historical realism. The result is a film that feels constructed -- which is the point, since construction is what the film is about.

A common theme of his films was innocence confronting evil

In a 1970 interview, Hill identified the thread running through his work: "A common theme of my films was innocence versus evil." He also revealed a sensibility rooted in history and structure: "Just as I play nothing but Bach for pleasure, so do I read nothing but history for pleasure. I like to be able to sit back and pick out the most fascinating facets of an era." This combination -- moral clarity expressed through formal precision -- describes both his best work and his limitations. (wikipedia)

Despite directing two of the decade's biggest hits, Hill was never embraced by the critical establishment. His work was "frequently derided as 'impersonal' or lacking in stylistic trademarks" at a time when Coppola, Scorsese, and Altman were celebrated precisely for their stylistic signatures. Hill's response was to keep working and stay quiet. He died of Parkinson's disease complications on December 27, 2002, at age 81. (wikipedia, britannica)

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