Reviews
The Cincinnati Kid
A young stud-poker player challenges an older one. The film takes two hours to reach a hand that lasts four minutes, and the arithmetic is correct.
Almost everything before the final game is preparation in the strict sense: we are taught the room, the money, the etiquette and, crucially, the tells. By the time the last hand is dealt the audience can read the table, which is why the sequence works without commentary.
The face
Jewison's decision is to stay on faces far longer than the cutting rhythm of 1965 would suggest. Steve McQueen is held in near stillness while the film declines to tell us what he is holding. The tension is not generated by editing but by the refusal to edit.
Compare this with the montage habit described in our essay on the casino sequence. The Kid could easily have been a film of quick hands and rising piles. Instead it is a film about two men looking at each other for a very long time.
Where it dates
The surrounding drama has aged less well; a romantic subplot exists mainly to give the last act somewhere to return to. But the card sequences are still the benchmark, and they are the reason the film survives.