There’s a trilogy of intensely charismatic, cameo-level, award-worthy performances — intense burn-throughs that rang the proverbial bell in 20 or 16 or even five minutes and 40 seconds. And they all happened during the second half of the 20th Century.

The longest of these was the least heralded — Jackie Gleason‘s Minnesota Fats in The Hustler (’61). His performance occupied only 20 minutes of screen time, but Gleason was nominated for Best Supporting Actor (along with costar George C. Scott).

In The Silence of the Lambs (’90) Anthony Hopkins‘ Hannibal Lecter had only 16 minutes of screen time, but it was sufficient to snag a Best Actor Oscar.

The shortest was Beatrice Straight‘s barn burner of a cameo in Network, technically just under six minutes but actually closer to four and three-quarters — that’s how long that marital argument scene she had with William Holden lasted. It won her a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, of course.

What 21st Century quickies qualify? Have there been any? I’m asking.

Wait, one more: Christopher Plummer‘s Mike Wallace in The Insider (’99), which — I’m just guessing — isn’t much longer than 25 minutes. Okay, possibly 30.

Bosley Crowther’s pearl-clutching review of Robert Rossen’s film, published on 9.27.61:

“The Hustler is not a picture to take the children to see, but it is one a father might wisely recommend to a restless teen-age son. For the characters one meets in the succession of sunless and smoky billiard halls that are tenanted in the course of this tough film are the sort to make your flesh creep and whatever blood you may have run cold.

“Indeed, one character says in the beginning that a pool-room looks like a morgue and ‘those tables are the slabs they lay the stiffs on.’ But this doesn’t say the weird assembly of pool players, gamblers, hangers-on and hustlers — especially the hustlers — which they used to call pool sharks in our youth, are not fascinating and exciting to watch at a safe distance from the screen. They’re high-strung, voracious and evil. They talk dirty, smoke, guzzle booze and befoul the dignity of human beings.

“Or at least, the hustlers’ wicked betting managers do. They have a consuming greed for money that cancels out charity and love. They’re full of energy and action. That’s the virtuous quality of this film.

“Under Robert Rossen‘s strong direction, its ruthless and odorous account of one young hustler’s eventual emancipation is positive and alive. It crackles with credible passions. It comes briskly and brusquely to sharp points. It doesn’t dawdle with romantic nonsense, except in one brief unfortunate stretch.Along about midway, after its hero has been washed out in a herculean game and has sneaked away into a cheap New York apartment with a fortuitously picked-up girl, it does mush about a bit with chitchat anent the deep yearnings of the heart and the needful direction a man takes to get onto solid ground.

“But even in this mushy area, Mr. Rossen and Sidney Carroll have provided their characters with dialogue that keeps them buoyant and alive. And soon they are potently projected into the world of the realists again—into a brutally cynical connivance and a gorge-raising sweep to an ironic end.

“There may not be much depth to the hero, whom Paul Newman violently plays with a master’s control of tart expressions and bitterly passionate attitudes. Nor may there be quite enough clarity in the complicated nature of the girl, whom Piper Laurie wrings into a pathetic and eventually exhausted little rag. But they’re both appealing people, he in a truculent, helpless way and she in the manner of a courageous, confused and uncompromising child.

“The real power is packed into the character of an evil gambler, whom George C. Scott plays as though the devil himself had donned dark glasses and taken up residence in a rancid billiard hall. Mr. Scott is magnificently malefic. When he lifts those glasses and squints, it is as though somebody had suddenly put a knife between your ribs.

“Jackie Gleason is also excellent — more so than you first realize — as a cool, self-collected pool expert who has gone into bondage to the gambling man. His deceptively casual behavior in that titanic initial game conceals a pathetic robot that you only later perceive.

“Myron McCormick is touchingly futile as a tin-horn manager and Murray Hamilton, too, is effective in the brief role of a wealthy billiards buff. Michael Constantine, Carl York and Jake LaMotta are colorful as poolroom types.

“An appropriately nervous jazz score keeps the eardrums sharp.”