Performer
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
The essay
Our editors on the work, the patterns and the reason this body of work holds together.
Sam Flint appears in 7 films in the Nutevio catalogue, and none of them would work the same way without Sam. Psycho is the clearest case: a film rated 8.5 by our editors, where the performance carries weight the script only implies.
The recognisable elements are versatility, transformation, quiet performance. Watch two of these films back to back and the method separates from the material — the same instrument, tuned differently for comedy, music, mystery. It is a style built on what is withheld as much as what is played.
Working with Bob Rafelson, Alfred Hitchcock, Charles Vidor and others, Sam Flint helped set a standard other performers now audition against. Awards bodies have been slower than the work, which is usually the sign of a career built on choices rather than campaigns.
Psycho (1960) as County Sheriff (uncredited) · It's a Wonderful Life (1946) as Relieved Banker in Potter's Office (uncredited) · Strangers on a Train (1951) as Train Passenger Requesting Light (uncredited)
Career snapshot
A Nutevio catalogue profile for Sam Flint.
Films in Nutevio
7
1937–1968
Career length
31 yrs
Measured across our catalogue
Academy Awards
—
Unknown
Oscar nominations
—
Unknown
Highest Nutevio score
8.5
Psycho
Average Nutevio score
7.2
Across catalogue work
Highest IMDb rating
8.4
Psycho
Most frequent director
Alfred Hitchcock
2 films together
Longest collaboration
2×
With Alfred Hitchcock
Most common genre
Thriller
3 titles
Average runtime
2h 8m
Across catalogue work
Golden Globe wins
—
Unknown
Nutevio metric
Ten weighted categories, applied identically to everyone we cover.
Nutevio Performer Score
7.2
out of 10
A performer whose catalogue work here is strong, with the fuller case still to be made.
Nutevio metric
Cultural impact and legacy, measured separately from craft — how far the work travelled once it left the cinema.
Nutevio Influence Score
7.0
out of 10
A quieter influence — felt inside the films rather than across the industry.
How far the work travelled past the people who saw it first.
What survives once the release-week conversation has burned off.
Institutional acknowledgement, weighted but never decisive.
Years of chosen, relevant work rather than years merely employed.
Statuettes, read as evidence rather than verdict.
Roles named without needing the film named alongside them.
Directors who wrote parts because this performer existed.
The reading other performers now have to answer.
Actor DNA
A fingerprint derived from the roles themselves — register, range and the kind of film they carry.
The shape of a career
Every performance plotted in time. Hover a point to read the title behind it.
Peak years
Where the scores, the awards and the sheer volume of work agree with each other.
Best decade
1950s
7.5 average MV
The 1950s are where the work and the material meet. Strangers on a Train — the run our editors reach for first when the argument is about range rather than fame.
Highest average Nutevio score
1950s
7.5
Across 1 catalogue film in this decade, our scores never drop below the level a career is judged on.
Highest average IMDb rating
1950s
7.7
The public agrees most strongly about this stretch — useful context, and occasionally a decade behind our own reading.
Most awarded era
1930s
0 Academy Awards
Statuettes for the films themselves, which is the honest way to read an ensemble career. Topper.
Most productive era
1940s
3 films
The busiest stretch of the catalogue — volume that reads as appetite rather than availability.
Range, mapped
Genres down the side, decades across the top. Warmer cells mean stronger titles.
| Genre | 1930s | 1940s | 1950s | 1960s |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Drama | — | 7.62 films | 7.51 film | — |
| Action | — | 6.31 film | — | — |
| Thriller | — | 7.11 film | 7.51 film | 8.51 film |
| Comedy | 6.51 film | — | — | 6.31 film |
| Crime | — | 6.31 film | 7.51 film | — |
| Romance | 6.51 film | 7.11 film | — | — |
| Horror | — | — | — | 8.51 film |
Chronology
Firsts and peaks
The turning points, in the order they happened.
First film in Nutevio
1937Topper
Where our catalogue meets this career, as Board Member (uncredited).
Highest rated performance · Career peak
1960Psycho
8.5 on the Nutevio scale, the top of the catalogue for this performer. Weighing billing against the film's own quality, this is the point where everything aligned at once.
Most recent film
1968Head
The current state of the argument, as Old Man (uncredited).
Our order
Every performance in the catalogue, ordered by Nutevio Score.
Every title
Filter by genre or decade, and compare any two titles side by side.
7 of 7 films
as County Sheriff (uncredited)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
as Relieved Banker in Potter's Office (uncredited)
Directed by Frank Capra
as Train Passenger Requesting Light (uncredited)
Directed by Alfred Hitchcock
as American Cartel Member (uncredited)
Directed by Charles Vidor
as Old Man (uncredited)
Directed by Bob Rafelson
From the library
Every movie and TV credit stored for this name in the Nutevio catalogue — filter by media, role or sort by rating.
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The defining work
#1
County Sheriff (uncredited)
Psycho (1960)
Performance score8.2
The performance the rest of the career is read through. County Sheriff (uncredited) gives Sam Flint a structure to work against, and the film hands over its centre of gravity without hesitation.
View movie#2
Relieved Banker in Potter's Office (uncredited)
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
Performance score7.9
It's a Wonderful Life asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Relieved Banker in Potter's Office (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#3
Train Passenger Requesting Light (uncredited)
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Performance score7.3
Strangers on a Train asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. Train Passenger Requesting Light (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movie#4
American Cartel Member (uncredited)
Gilda (1946)
Performance score7.0
Gilda asks for something the previous films did not, and gets it. American Cartel Member (uncredited) is played without a single line of pleading for the audience's sympathy — which is exactly why it lands.
View movieStart here
A guided path through the work, ordered so each film explains the next.
Best entry point
as County Sheriff (uncredited)
Start here. Psycho is the clearest statement of what Sam Flint does — accessible, 109 minutes, and rated 8.5 by our editors. No context required.
Our editors order this path by accessibility first and chronology second. You meet Sam at the most legible performance, then move forward in time so each film reads as a response to the one before it rather than a repetition of it.
It's a Wonderful Life (1946)
A deliberate change of key after Psycho — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Gilda (1946)
Keeps the drama register of It's a Wonderful Life but asks for a colder reading of it.
Strangers on a Train (1951)
Keeps the drama register of Gilda but asks for a colder reading of it.
Head (1968)
A deliberate change of key after Strangers on a Train — same instrument, unfamiliar tuning, and the reason range gets mentioned.
Company kept
The directors and performers this career keeps returning to.
Alfred Hitchcock
Director
2 films together
Notably Psycho
Norman Z. McLeod
Director
1 film together
Notably Topper
Lambert Hillyer
Director
1 film together
Notably Batman
Frank Capra
Director
1 film together
Notably It's a Wonderful Life
Charles Vidor
Director
1 film together
Notably Gilda
Bob Rafelson
Director
1 film together
Notably Head
Behind the camera
Who casts this performer, how often, and what the pairing produces.
Alfred Hitchcock
Director
2 films together · 8.0 avg MV
A working relationship rather than a booking — 2 films, and the register shifts each time.
Best film together
PsychoFrank Capra
Director
1 film together · 8.2 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
It's a Wonderful LifeCharles Vidor
Director
1 film together · 7.1 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
GildaNorman Z. McLeod
Director
1 film together · 6.5 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
TopperBob Rafelson
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
HeadLambert Hillyer
Director
1 film together · 6.3 avg MV
One film, but the kind that reorganises how a performer is cast afterwards.
Best film together
BatmanSix degrees
Follow the thread outward — director, film, co-star, and the film after that.
Categories of our own
Six editorial categories we apply to every performer we cover.
Most rewatchable
Psycho
as County Sheriff (uncredited)
The one that survives a fourth viewing. Nothing in the performance depends on surprise, which is why it keeps paying out.
Most emotional performance
It's a Wonderful Life
as Relieved Banker in Potter's Office (uncredited)
Grief played at conversational volume. The film never asks the audience to cry; the performance simply makes it difficult not to.
Most influential performance
Psycho
as County Sheriff (uncredited)
You can hear this reading in other actors' auditions a decade later — the surest measure of influence there is.
Best ensemble performance
It's a Wonderful Life
as Relieved Banker in Potter's Office (uncredited)
Work that makes everyone else in the frame better without ever pulling the camera towards itself.
Career defining performance
Psycho
as County Sheriff (uncredited)
If the career had to be argued in a single scene, our editors would pick one from this film and rest the case.
In their films' words
“You can build a whole film around a performer who knows when not to speak. Sam Flint has known it for a long time.”
Head to head
Put two careers on the same scale and see where the argument actually sits.
Ours alone
Recognitions handed out by this desk, on criteria no awards body uses.
Career Achievement
Awarded
31 years of relevant work — not merely a long career, but a long career of choices.
Thriller Legend
Awarded
3 catalogue titles in thriller, each one a reference point for the films that followed.
Our desk
Best ending, best opening, best twist and the rest — categories we apply to everyone we cover.
Best ending
Psycho
as County Sheriff (uncredited)
The last five minutes reorganise everything before them, and hold up when you already know what's coming.
Best opening
Psycho
as County Sheriff (uncredited)
A first sequence that states the rules of the film without explaining a single one of them.
Most emotional
Gilda
as American Cartel Member (uncredited)
The film where the technique steps aside and lets the feeling arrive undefended.
Best twist
Psycho
as County Sheriff (uncredited)
A reversal earned by information the film gave you and trusted you to misread.
Best visual achievement
Psycho
as County Sheriff (uncredited)
Images that would survive with the sound switched off.
Best action sequence
Batman
as Dr. Borden
Geography, stakes and consequence held in the same frame — spectacle you can follow.
Best dialogue
Gilda
as American Cartel Member (uncredited)
Lines written to be spoken, staged so the pauses do half the work.
Most underrated film
Head
as Old Man (uncredited)
The public vote sits below ours on this one, and the direction is the reason for the gap.
If you like this performer
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Bonnie Hunt
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Morgan Freeman
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Jamie Harris
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Have your say
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Reference
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