House of Games (1987)

Learning the Only Game in Town

SPOILERS ABOUND

Regardless of your career, any achieved success invariably exposes you to what you haven’t yet attained. You finally earn a raise or promotion, only to find someone else in your office has gained a bigger reward. Or maybe you’ve been in your profession long enough to realize something is holding you back, something you can work to improve if you can just find the right mentor. Yet such self-improvement endeavors come at a price, as Maggie Ford (Lindsay Crouse) discovers in David Mamet’s House of Games (1987).

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Dr. Maggie Ford, a highly respected psychiatrist with clients scheduled months in advance, knows she’s professionally and personally incomplete. Maggie certainly looks the part of the consummate professional, wearing a robe-like navy jacket over a starched white blouse, giving her an almost judicial air as she walks through the city plaza to her office building. Her status seems lofty and elevated, made even more so by the low camera angle. Her thick sunglasses prevent us from seeing her eyes, suggesting she’s either hiding something or is blind to certain elements of the world that are obvious to others. We soon come to realize both suspicions are true. 

Maggie’s practice and her best-selling book Driven focus on addictive behaviors. Her patient Billy (Steven Goldstein), a habitual gambler, is in serious trouble. Maggie promises Billy she can help, but he insists her sessions are nothing more than talk. “It’s a con game,” Billy says, telling Maggie she’s living in a dream world and has no idea what real trouble is. “I just lost $25,000. If I don’t pay it by tomorrow, they’re going to kill me. Now what kind of help is your damn promise now?”

Maggie recognizes that Billy’s right; her sessions aren’t effective. She has to do something to address this problem, not only to help Billy but also to correct a deficiency in herself which may be professional, personal, or both. Maggie decides to go straight to the people threatening Billy, assuming they can be reasonably dealt with using the same methods she employs in her practice. When she meets Mike (Joe Mantegna), the con man to whom Billy owes the money, Maggie has no idea what she’s getting herself into.  

Entering Mike’s pool hall, the House of Games, Maggie is savvy enough to understand the need to look and act tough. She meets Mike and quickly asks him to forgive Billy’s debt (which turns out to be much smaller than Billy had led her to believe). Mike says he’ll forgive the debt if she’ll do something for him. He’s in the middle of a card game and is convinced the big Texan (Ricky Jay) who’s been winning all night is bluffing. The Texan’s bluff is defined by a “tell,” an unconscious look or action that “tells” otherwise hidden information, such as a bluff in a poker game. The Texan knows that Mike has become aware of his tell and has stopped doing it. When Mike leaves the room for a few moments he instructs Maggie to watch for the tell and report to him when he returns.

Not only is Maggie flattered that she’s been trusted to witness such inside information on gambling, cons, and human behavior, but she’s also becoming sexually aroused, both by the atmosphere and Mike. With Mike and the House of Games, Maggie has found exactly what she’s been missing. At least for the moment, she’s forgotten her professional training, caught up in the promise of new knowledge and experiences, mixed with strong sexual desire. The allure is irresistible.