Why I love Paul Newman’s per­for­mance in Cool Hand Luke

“Oh Luke, you wild, beau­ti­ful thing!” exclaims Dragline (George Kennedy), lov­ing best friend to Paul Newman’s epony­mous non­con­formist. When Lucas Jack­son is caught drunk­en­ly pulling park­ing meters off their poles he is sen­tenced to two years in a Flori­da pen­i­ten­tiary. It’s an unfor­giv­ing place under the per­pet­u­al watch of the iron­i­cal­ly nick­named ​‘the man with no eyes’, Boss God­frey (Mor­gan Wood­ward), who stares down at the pris­on­ers through his mir­rored avi­a­tor sun­glass­es. It’s a place built on rules, both the inter­nal reg­u­la­tions of the prison and the unof­fi­cial code of its unruly chain gang, who toil away under the hot south­ern sun.

Luke is a man who oper­ates on his own terms. He laughs hearti­ly as the police arrive to arrest him for pet­ty dam­age to munic­i­pal prop­er­ty, and is will­ing to risk every­thing to escape what would have only been a two-year jail term. Newman’s exquis­ite por­tray­al of this nuanced char­ac­ter is a big part of why the film has endured for half a century.

New­man gives a mas­ter­class in under­stat­ed act­ing here. Luke’s pres­ence shouldn’t real­ly draw the atten­tion of the audi­ence and his fel­low pris­on­ers; he’s qui­et and by no means walks with the con­fi­dence that his facial expres­sions betray. In his first few days in the prison he doesn’t assert him­self in any con­sid­er­able way. He is nei­ther the new trou­ble mak­er nor the gang’s next leader, in fact a small com­ment gets him into a fight which he los­es mis­er­ably and sees him slump back to his bunk defeat­ed. So, what is it about Luke?

Scyth­ing crops shirt­less in the pun­ish­ing Flori­da heat, Newman’s phys­i­cal pres­ence does a lot of the talk­ing for him. Luke draws in the gang with his qui­et con­fi­dence, win­ning a hand of pok­er with a ​“hand­ful of noth­ing”, after which he earns the nick­name ​‘Cool Hand’, and famous­ly assert­ing that he can eat 50 eggs in one sit­ting, win­ning him both mon­ey and trust with­in the group.

The qui­et charis­ma and uncrush­able spir­it that New­man brings to the role of Luke draws the pris­on­ers to the new­com­er and they soon grow to rely on his courage for their own strength and san­i­ty. In this sense, Luke has been likened to the fig­ure of Christ. In fact, Frank Pier­son specif­i­cal­ly wrote in reli­gious sym­bol­ism when re-work­ing Donn Pierce’s orig­i­nal nov­el into the screen­play. Luke is not the biggest or the strongest of the inmates, but he exudes assured­ness through his actions.

He moti­vates the gang to work faster so they can enjoy two hours of bliss­ful rest before the sun sets and he faces his unjust pun­ish­ments with brav­ery. Don­ning a white robe as he is placed into ​‘the box’, a small shed with bare­ly room to move, he faces his pun­ish­ment calm­ly. With his every attempt at escape, the prison pop­u­la­tion cel­e­brate his free­dom. ​“We in here dig­gin’ and dyin’, he’s out there livin’ and fly­in’”, beams Dragline as he pours over a pho­to of Luke liv­ing life out in the free world. ​“That’s my baby!” his ador­ing dis­ci­ple exclaims. Luke’s fel­low pris­on­ers look to him for guid­ance and hope and, in an uncan­ny bib­li­cal echo, begin to lose faith in him when his harsh­est pun­ish­ment brings him to his knees and he begs the guards for mercy.

Accord­ing to crit­ic Roger Ebert, the film’s secret ingre­di­ent is New­man’ unmis­tak­able smile. It’s a look of rebel­lion, of defi­ance and of the wicked enjoy­ment of sub­vert­ing the rules that has both the audi­ence and char­ac­ters under its spell. At the time of the film’s release, the clos­ing mon­tage of Luke’s cheeky grin was an emo­tion­al cli­max to a fic­tion­al sto­ry. For a mod­ern film audi­ence, Cool Hand Luke is the per­fect way to (re)discover both a bril­liant actor and a beau­ti­ful man.