CLASSIC FILM COLLECTION

GET THE GRIFTERS FOR pounds 3; Meet the gang: a film buff's guide to The Grifters

B efore Pulp Fiction, there was The Grifters, the second title in your classic film collection. Based on Jim Thompson's 1963 pulp novel, it has the smell of racetracks, cheap liquor and pool-halls about it. Modern cinema has had a tough time capturing that sort of aura, especially in its attempts to bring pulp to the screen (the Elmore Leonard adaptations 52 Pick-Up, Cat Chaser and Get Shorty have all been near-misses). But after watching Stephen Frears' dark and sometimes darkly comic thriller, you come out feeling grubby and bashed-in: its characters and its world engulf you. The film traces the lives of three "grifters" or con artists, and in a neat split-screen device (which he had used to poor effect earlier in Sammy and Rosie Get Laid), Frears unites them in a breathlessly confident opening sequence.

Lily (Anjelica Huston) is the hard-bitten pro of the trio, a woman whose peroxide halo emits the same fearsome energy as Medusa's bouffant of vipers. Roy (John Cusack) is her son. He has followed in his mother's footsteps, but his ambitions are more modest: while Lily rules fate at the racetrack by tampering with the odds, Roy squeezes the last cents out of losers and barflies. He has a lover, Myra (Annette Bening), who uses her body as the basis of her swindling. But the sexual electrics have been wired up all askew: the real sparks are between Roy and Lily, who barely know each other.When Lily meets Myra, she stakes the girl out with her carnivorous eyes, ready to devour her. But Myra gives as good as she gets - she's not going to give Roy up to anyone, not even his own mother. For all the film's keenly executed (and sparing) bursts of violence, the most startling scenes find Lily and Myra locked in combat over Roy.

The Grifters was not a blazing box-office success, but the critics (including Pauline Kael) raved. The film earned four Oscar nominations (though it won nothing), pre-dated 1995's lust for noir and remains the most compelling of Stephen Frears' Hollywood works. As well as one of the most sinister and morally ambiguous thrillers ever to sneak through the system.

JOHN CUSACK The Grifters now appears to have beeen a turning point in the career of this diligent young actor, who had done hard labour in some teen fluff before Rob Reiner's engaging romantic comedy The Sure Thing (1985). Then his career regressed, and he was tempted back into a run of empty-headed comedies. The Grifters reminded us of his unique combination of stubborness and vulnerability. It paid off. He has since acted twice for Woody Allen (Shadows and Fog, Bullets over Broadway), once for Robert Altman (prickly as himself in The Player) and holds his own against Al Pacino in City Hall (out here on 12 April).

ANJELICA HUSTON The formidable daughter of John Huston had been most dazzling in her father's mob comedy Prizzi's Honour (1985), and his last film The Dead (1987). Before The Grifters, she had been demonic in Nicolas Roeg's The Witches (1990), in which she played the Grand Witch as a caricature of Lotte Lenya. She was moving in Woody Allen's muddled Crimes and Misdemeanours (1989), and did some lighter and funnier work for him in Manhattan Murder Mystery (1993). After being nominated for the Best Actress Oscar for The Grifters, she brought Morticia Addams to life in the Addams Family films (1991/93).

ANNETTE BENING Like Anjelica Huston, Bening was nominated for an Oscar (Best Supporting Actress) for The Grifters, though she didn't win. But it brought her a stack of high-profile parts. She had come a cropper in Valmont (1989), Milos Forman's version of Dangerous Liaisons, though she was splendidly dumb as a would-be starlet in Postcards from the Edge (1990). Then she met Warren Beatty on Bugsy (1991), played second fiddle to Harrison Ford in Regarding Henry (1992), married Beatty, had his child, messed it up badly when they made Love Affair (1994), but redeemed herself last year in The American President.

PAT HINGLE You don't forget Hingle in The Grifters - he's there in one of the film's nastiest and most memorable scenes, involving some nasty business with a bag of oranges. But he's a background man, a "where- have-I-seen-him?" face. Well, you've seen him in stock character roles in the Clint Eastwood thrillers The Gauntlet (1977) and Sudden Impact (1983), and with Sean Penn and Timothy Hutton in The Falcon and the Snowman (1985); and adrift in the chaos and bluster as Commissioner Gordon in Batman (1989) and Batman Returns (1992), the two films that sandwiched his sinister turn in The Grifters.

THE GRIFTERS

1990, 113 minutes, US

Director

Producers Photographer Film Editor

Screenplay Music Art direction

Roy Dillon Lilly Dillon Myra Langtry Bobo Justus Langtry Desk Clerk

Myra's Landlord

Stephen Frears Martin Scorsese Robert A Harris

James Painten

Oliver Stapleton

Mick Audsley

Donald E Westlake

( from the novel by Jim Thompson)

Elmer Bernstein

Leslie McDonald John Cusack

Anjelica Huston

Annette Bening

Pat Hingle JT Walsh

Henry Jones

Gailard Sartain

JT WALSH Another backroom boy. Walsh is everywhere, and he's the best of America's character actors, along with James Woods, Will Patton and M Emmet Walsh. He has nasty eyes, so when he turned up as an amiable cop in last year's Silent Fall, it just didn't work. He's better throwing his weight around in House of Games (1987), and bringing extra wickedness to John Dah's terrific modern noirs, Red Rock West (1993), where he hired a hit-man to bump off his wife, and The Last Seduction (1994), where a stubborn cameo suggested he was the only man fit to tame Linda Fiorentino. Now he's sliming around in Nixon.

STEPHEN FREARS When he uprooted to Hollywood, Frears made a glamorous splash with the spiky Dangerous Liaisons (1989) and The Grifters, for which he was nominated for a Best Director Oscar. He had been a hard and compassionate director in Britain. His best films are the explosive Bloody Kids (1979); and the taut, ticklish thriller The Hit (1984); and the on- the-hoof My Beautiful Laundrette, the finest film of 1985. Now he looks stranded in Hollywood, after Accidental Hero (1993) and Mary Reilly, a Jekyll & Hyde story with Julia Roberts and John Malkovich. It will finally open in May after much re-cutting.

MARTIN SCORSESE The Grifters came at a point in Scorsese's career when the celebrated Italian-American at last seemed fallible. There was no evidence of ambition or innovation in Cape Fear (1991), and though 1990's Goodfellas had been giddy with confidence, its bravura visuals disguised a hollow, amoral core. His Edith Wharton adaptation The Age of Innocence (1993) was beautifully intuitive, the most affecting thing he had done since Raging Bull. He produced Spike Lee's Clockers which, like his own Casino, was unkempt. He is rumoured to be working on a Buddhism project, and another about Richard Pryor.

ELMER BERNSTEIN This composer had the makings of a Renaissance man - he has had careers as an actor, a dancer and a painter. He has been immersed in film music since the 1950s; his best scores have a rolling grandeur or an ebbing melodiousness (his worst, such as 1983's Trading Places, combine the two). His Oscar was for Thoroughly Modern Millie in 1967, and he has scored every film ever made. Almost. The most notable include The Ten Commandments (1956), The Great Escape (1963), The Shootist (1976). After The Grifters, his work graced A River Runs Through It (1992) and The Age of Innocence (1993).

Get a classic video for only pounds 3 when you buy The Independent or the Independent On Sunday

Today and tomorrow we are offering The Grifters, the second movie in The Independent Classic Film Collection. The video will be yours for only pounds 3 when you buy The Independent or Independent on Sunday. Each week you will be able to get a new video and build a classic film library.

Every weekend, you can order a film classic with your copy of The Independent or Independent on Sunday. The collection began last weekend with When Harry Met Sally. The second film, available today and tomorrow, is Stephen Frears' under world triller The Grifters, starring Anjelica Huston, John Cusack and Annette Bening, yours for only pounds 3 [excluding the price of the paper].

The films on offer will vary from recent classics to all time greats from the Golden Age of Hollywood. The collection will build into an impressive library showcasing the work of directors of the calibre of David Lean, Orson Welles, Ridley Scott and Steven Spielberg. Each film will be presented in the paper with a comprehensive background feature giving profiles of the stars and director and notes on the film.

No longer will you have to jostle in the queue at your local video rental shop for your movie. For the same price as renting, you can buy a video and keep it for ever.

l To order your copy of The Grifters, fill in the application form below and enclose a cheque or postal order for pounds 3, with the top of today's or tomorrow's front page. Send your application to: The Independent Classic Film Collection, PO Box 33, Market Harborough, Leicestershire LE16 9UR. This offer is subject to availability and standard Newspaper Publishing plc conditions. Please allow 14 days for delivery. This offer is available to Republic of Ireland readers only.