If there’s anything that links this week’s film selection, it’s the obvious connection that all of them deal with the often tragic, futile attempts of their male protagonists to fashion the world to their aims with their fists in opposition to those around them — be they friend or foe.
There’s plenty of well-observed business in the ring, but what’s sustained the genre ever since it first emerged in the early days of the movies is the emotional and psychological toll life in the ring takes on its participants when they’re outside it.
THE ARTHOUSE ESSENTIAL
Fat City — YouTube
One of Golden Hollywood era master John Huston’s exceptional late-era works, this 1972 boxing noir stars criminally underrated workhorse actor Stacey Keach as Tully, a past-his-prime slugger who goes to a gym in Stockton, California, to get back into shape. There he spars with teenage Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges), whose talent he’s so impressed by that he recommends the youngster contact his former manager and trainer to get himself on the pro track. Inspired by Munger’s raw talent, Tully also decides that maybe he still has enough for one last shot himself.
The fateful meeting will not quite produce the starry results and victorious dreams that both boxers have in mind, but it will forge a relationship between the two men that forms the quiet but carefully observed human drama that served to make the film one of Huston’s most critically acclaimed. It also earned a Best Supporting Actress nomination for Susan Tyler, who plays the unpredictable and tragic barfly Oma Lee Greer.
Based on the novel by Leonard Gardner, the film is directed with careful attention to the art of boxing — inspired by Huston’s own experiences as a promising amateur in 1930s Los Angeles. Filmed on location in the gritty, rundown nooks and crannies of Stockton, it’s both a superior boxing film and an affecting human-centred drama with a strong feel for the small, desperate lives of its characters and the ghostliness of its setting.
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THE STONE-COLD CLASSIC
Requiem for a Heavyweight — YouTube
Based on a 1956 play for television, written by Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling and starring Jack Palance, this 1962 film version was directed by Ralph Nelson and starred prolific character actor Anthony Quinn alongside comic legends Jackie Gleason and Mickey Rooney.
Quinn plays ageing heavyweight Luis “Mountain” Rivera, who, after a fight in which he lasts longer than agreed to fall in the fourth round his manager made, finds himself the target of angry gangsters and so badly defeated that he’s ruled unfit for any future fights.
As he struggles to find work in the normal areas available to men like him, Mountain’s ever-cunning, hustling manager pressures him to consider a new career as a professional wrestler. As his attempts to leave the world of the ring behind and forge a new, respectable life seem increasingly impossible, and with the threat of violence against his manager moving ever closer, the once-promising heavyweight turned middle-aged nobody must make a fateful decision that, though it may cause him final, unbearable humiliation, may also save someone he cares about.
Though it was generally well received at the time by critics who praised Quinn’s gruff, rugged portrayal of cornered masculinity, the film’s director was not so easily impressed. In a 1963 letter to Life Magazine, Nelson complained that whereas Jack Palance, who had played the role in the original television play, had “won an Emmy for his hauntingly gentle performance,” Quinn “was afraid that gentleness would reflect upon his image of masculinity and so chose to play Sonny Liston instead.” Nelson concluded that he felt that Palance’s performance was “truer to the role and fulfilled the concept of the script more effectively than Quinn’s attempt to dominate it.”
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THE DIAMOND IN THE ROUGH
Hard Times — YouTube
Before he went on to become an adept writer and successful action director in films like cult favourite The Warriors, smash-hit 48 Hours and popular Bruce Willis favourite Last Man Standing, Walter Hill quietly announced his talents for showing, not telling, with this 1975 action drama starring Charles Bronson and James Coburn.
Bronson plays the quiet, enigmatic drifter and freight-train hopper Chaney, who, during the hard times of the Great Depression, finds himself in Louisiana, where he demonstrates a brutal talent in illicit bareknuckle fights. Backed by the self-assured, fast-talking hustler “Speed” (Coburn), Chaney establishes himself as an underground anti-hero and a force to be reckoned with. That is until Speed’s gambling debts land the pair in trouble with local gangsters who force them to take on a fearsome opponent brought in from Chicago to test Chaney’s physical limits and personal loyalties.
The film was generally well received and continued to make money for Hill for years afterwards, while also establishing the template to which Hill has consistently returned over the course of his subsequent career: an overtalkative, overconfident hustler serves as the foil to a quiet, determined man of action anti-hero, and the friction between them serves to drive the action entertainingly forward towards the achievement of the central pair’s ultimate goal and grudging eventual mutual respect.
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