As Jack Huston's Day of the Fight goes on general release, Cinema Paradiso looks back over 130 years of boxing on screen.
Taking its title from a classic 1951 Stanley Kubrick documentary, Day of the Fight follows Mike Flanagan (Michael C. Pitt), as he prepares for a comeback fight at New York's iconic Madison Square Garden. Since he last fought, the former middleweight champion has served time for a drink-driving accident that left him with a brain injury. But, as 'Irish Mike' makes his way around Brooklyn in the hours before the bout, he is less interested in his opponent than in putting things right with his ailing father (Joe Pesci), kindly uncle (Steve Buscemi), ex-wife (Nicolette Robinson), priest pal (John Magaro), and nowty coach (Ron Perlman).
Critic A.O. Scott once noted, 'With the possible exception of the romantic comedy, no film genre is more strictly governed by conventions - or enslaved by clichés, if you prefer - than the boxing picture.' Some platitudes come with the territory, as boxing has long been seen as a potential route out of hardship for those with limited options. There is also big money to be made out of the fight game, with powerful people being prepared to exploit contenders and champions alike in order to rake in the proceeds of prize purses and side bets.
Film producers have always liked rags-to-riches stories, as they allow audiences to dream as they identify with a hero on an upward trajectory. Like decline and fall sagas, however, they also enable film-makers to discuss weightier issues, such as poverty, violence, prejudice, corruption, and social and sporting integrity. No wonder Hollywood has made so many more films about boxing than any other sport, with 22 of them having been nominated for an Academy Award.
But the connection between pugilism and the moving image is so fundamental to the latter's emergence as both a form of entertainment and art that historian Luke McKernan has boldly claimed, 'it was boxing that created the cinema.'
First Flickerings
In 1891, when William Kennedy Laurie Dickson and William Heise were looking for subjects to record with the Kinetograph camera, they asked two employees at Thomas Alva Edison's laboratory at West Orange, New Jersey to don some boxing gloves and spar. They wore everyday clothes and barely landed a blow, but the duo in Men Boxing (1891) became the first boxers in film history. Three years later, Dickson filmed a couple of feline stars from Professor Henry Welton's touring 'cat circus' for Boxing Cats (1894). But their boss wanted something more spectacular for the coin-operated Kinetosope viewers that he was about to launch.
At Edison's behest, Mike Leonard and Jack Cushing fought six rounds some time between 24 May and 14 June in a ring that had been rigged inside the cramped Black Maria studio where Dickson was trying to perfect the capture of sequential movement that would appear lifelike when viewed at 40 frames per second through a peephole in a light-proof cabinet. Premiered in Manhattan on 4 August, The Leonard-Cushing Fight was the first sports film to be shown to the public. Only 23 seconds has survived, but fate has been kinder to Corbett and Courtney Before the Kinetograph (aka Edison Kinetoscopic Record of Boxers and The Corbett-Courtney Fight, 1894), which was recorded on 7 September. Gentleman Jim was a former world heavyweight champion and the bout was staged so he could knock out his humble opponent in the sixth and final round.
Only part of one round has survived, but the original was viewed in six separate machines, so that punters would have to splash out half a dollar to see the complete bout. Realising that there was money to be made at a time when boxing was still illegal in several states, Major Woodville Latham and his sons, Otway and Gray, formed the Kinetoscope Exhibiting Company with Samuel Tilden and Enoch J. Rector and used the Black Maria to stage fights, even though Edison didn't actually approve of the sport.
Keen to cut out the middle man, the Lathams formed the Lambda Company and hired French inventor Eugène Lauste to develop a camera-projector that could show their boxing films to larger audiences. Initially known as the Panopticon, the Eidoloscope was fitted with a bend in the celluloid strip to prevent it from tearing as it passed through the gate of the projecting lens. This 'Latham Loop' made it possible to use longer reels and the entire history of cinema owes a debt to this ingenious doodad that had been devised to film rounds that lasted longer than 60 seconds.
Moonlighting from Edison, Dickson helped Otway Latham recreate scenes of a fight between Arthur Griffiths and Charles Barnett on the roof of Madison Square Garden on 4 May 1895. They projected the four-minute Young Griffo v Battling Charles Barnett at 156 Lower Broadway on 20 May, a good seven months before Louis and Auguste Lumière gave the first cinema show to a paying audience in Paris. By all accounts, the light source was too weak to give a sharp image, but the papers all noted that Edison had competition.
When Nevada legalised boxing, Enoch Rector bought three 63mm cameras to film the first sanctioned bout between James Corbett and Bob Fitzsimmons on 17 March 1897. An audience of two thousand watched The Corbett-Fitzsimmons Fight at the New York Academy of Music on 22 May. As the footage ran between 90-100 minutes, this has been claimed as the first feature film, while others have cited it as the first pay-per-view transaction. Interestingly, with prizefighting still illegal in 21 states, Los Angeles legislated against boxing films being projected or viewed via Kinetoscopes. But 11 companies bought the rights to show the film across the United States, complete with a live commentary. On 27 September 1897, it was presented at the Royal Aquarium Theatre in London before playing across Europe, which made each boxer a tidy sum in royalties.
Once again, only fragments of this landmark picture are still extant. It was long thought that Birt Acres's Boxing Match; or, Glove Contest (1896) was also lost. But a copy of Sergeant-Instructor Barrett squaring up to Sergeant Pope was found and entrusted to the National Fairground Archive and it can now be viewed online.
Although women were not permitted to attend fights, they were able to see boxing films. Female attendance figures are disputed, but Bessie and Minnie Gordon were sufficiently inspired to take up the sport and the 'champion' duo appeared in Edison's The Gordon Sisters Boxing (1901). This was only an exhibition match, but the 1906 title tussle between Joe Gans and Battling Nelson lasted 48 rounds, which was bad news for the company recording the event, as they only had enough film stock for 38 rounds.
Knockabout Knockouts
Several variety performers lampooned boxing in their acts, so it was inevitable that these comic capers would end up on the big screen. Pug (Roscoe Arbuckle) tries to impress his wife (Minta Durfee) by taking on champion Cyclone Flynn (Edgar Kennedy) in Charles Avery's The Knockout (1914). And, yes, that is Charlie Chaplin as the referee, as Cinema Paradiso users can see if they rent Chaplin At Keystone (2010). You'll need The Essanay Films - Volume 1 (2003) to find The Champion (1915), which sees the Little Tramp stuff his good luck horseshoe into his glove to fight Spike Dugan (Ernest Van Pelt).
Chaplin's finest moment in the ring, however, came in City Lights (1931), when he participates in a fixed fight to help a blind flowergirl (Virginia Cherrill), only for his opponent to be switched at the last moment for a snarling prizefighter (Hank Mann). Stan Laurel had to be similarly fleet on his feet in James W. Horne's Any Old Port (1932), which can be found on Maritime Adventures (2004), although he's far handier with his fists when he gets his dander up in Alfred J. Goulding's A Chump At Oxford (1940).
Playing a millionaire milquetoast, Buster Keaton finds himself being mistaken for the champion fighter with whom he shares a name in Battling Butler (1926) and his namesake (Francis McDonald) isn't amused by the mistake. We should be eternally grateful that so many films by the screen's silent slapstick icons have survived, as no one thought to preserve a copy of Roy Del Ruth's Hold Everything (1930), even though this Joe E. Brown romp was the first boxing film to have been made in two-tone Technicolor. Curiously, the Vitaphone disc soundtrack can still be heard online.
Boxer Kid Berg finds himself caught up with the ageing Julian Rose, when he goes on a spending spree after learning that he has to prove he's in need of cash in order to inherit a fortune in Norman Lee's social satire, Money Talks (1932). And another notable British pugilist turned to acting in Redd Davis's Excuse My Glove (1936), as fairground barker Archie Pitt spots that stained glass maker Len Harvey has a bit about him when he accepts a challenge to spar in a boxing booth.
Too many boxing pictures from Hollywood's Golden Age are unavailable in this country, which is a shame, as Stuart Irwin amuses as the no-hoper in Benjamin Stoloff's Palooka (1934). Not even a Best Story Oscar nomination can help the cause of W.S. Van Dyke's The Prizefighter and the Lady (1933), which stars Myrna Loy in sparkling form as a singer with her heart set on champion Max Baer. He's one of several giants of the ring on show, with Jack Dempsey cameoing as a referee and Primo Carnera as Baer's opponent. The sight of Clark Gable being stripped for action should surely be a selling point for Lloyd Bacon's Cain and Mabel (1936), as he tries to sweet talk Broadway diva Marion Davies in a picture that earned Bobby Connolly an Oscar nod for Best Dance Direction.
Fortunately, we can offer you Leo McCarey's The Milky Way (1936), in which mild-mannered milkman Burleigh Sullivan (Harold Lloyd) conspires to help Speed McFarland (William Gargan) regain his middleweight belt after he springs a surprise victory. This lively romp was remade as The Kid From Brooklyn (1946) by Norman Z. McLeod, with Danny Kaye and Steve Cochran as the mismatched pugs. Virginia Mayo plays the girl of Kaye's dreams and Kay Walsh assumes the same role as the department store manicurist who prompts timid barber George Formby into challenging sporting goods salesman Guy Middleton to a showdown in Anthony Kimmins's Keep Fit (1937).
The plot is a touch more complicated in Alexander Hall's Here Comes Mr Jordan (1941), which explains why it won Oscars for Best Story and Best Screenplay. Robert Montgomery was nominated for Best Actor for his work as boxer Joe Pendleton, who is killed before his time and returns to earth in a different body because manager Pop Corkle (James Gleason, a Best Supporting nominee) had arranged for Pendleton's to be cremated. Pipped to Best Picture by John Ford's How Green Was My Valley, this slick comedy was remade with Warren Beatty as a dying American footballer in Heaven Can Wait, which picked up nine nominations in losing Best Picture to Michael Cimino's The Deer Hunter (both 1978).
A Ham Fisher comic-strip inspired Reginald Le Borg's Joe Palooka, Champ (1946), which launched an 11-strong Monogram series with Joe Kirkwood, Jr. as the small-town boy who makes good. The town is Inisfree in Oscar winner John Ford's The Quiet Man (1952), as Pittsburgh brawler Sean Thornton (John Wayne) goes in search of his roots after killing a man in the ring. Despite vowing never to fight again, he gets into a roaring donnybrook with Squire Will Danaher (Victor McLaglen) after falling for his sister, Mary Kate (Maureen O'Hara).
Ward Bond's priest helps Duke regain his confidence, but vicar Sydney Mullet (Leo Franklyn) is dead against doltish nephew Dickie (Brian Rix) going into the ring when promoter Wally Burton (William Hartnell) starts training hopefuls in the church hall in George Pollock's And the Same to You (1960). Two years later, opportunistic promoter Willy Grogan (Gig Young) discovers that Catskills car mechanic Walter Gulick (Elvis Presley) is useful with his fists in Phil Karlson's musical comedy, Kid Galahad (1962), which was based on a 1937 Michael Curtiz film of the same name that had starred Edward G. Robinson and Wayne Morris in the leads, with Bette Davis and Humphrey Bogart providing wisecracking support.
Norman Wisdom pops up as a boxing vicar in Robert Hartford-Jones's The Sandwich Man (1966). When in uniform, Wisdom had won the Army's flyweight title. But he had to be hypnotised in order to win £10 in a fairground boxing booth in John Paddy Carstairs's One Good Turn (1954).
The boxing comedy went out of fashion for a while and neither Sidney Poitier's Let's Do It Again (1975) nor Michael Preece's The Prize Fighter (1979) did much to restore its reputation, even though the latter Don Knotts vehicle did well at the US box office. No one could argue that Clint Eastwood's Every Which Way But Loose (1978) and Any Which Way You Can (1980) made for great art. But the misadventures of trucker Philo Beddoe (Eastwood) and his bare-knuckle boxing pet orangutan, Clyde, were undeniably good fun. Cinema Paradiso users may want to take advantage of our 'extra disc' policy to make a triple bill with Daniel Mann's Matilda (1978), which centres on scheming talent agent, Bernie Bonnelli (Elliott Gould), and a boxing kangaroo - an attraction Birt Actres had first captured on film in 1896.
The first half of the cod double feature in Stanley Donen's Movie Movie (1978) is Dynamite Hands, which neatly parodies fight film clichés, as promoter Gloves Malloy (George C. Scott) helps Joey Popchik (Harry Hamlin) pay for an operation to save his kid sister's eyesight. Opportunism is also the name of the game in Howard Zieff's The Main Event (1979), as perfume tycoon Hillary Kramer (Barbra Streisand) has to rely on washed-up boxer, Eddie 'Kid Natural' Scanlon (Ryan O'Neal), to help her rebuild her fortune after she's cheated by her accountant.
After basketball had dominated Rod Daniel's Teen Wolf (1985), Jason Batemen finds himself on the college boxing team in Christopher Leitch's Teen Wolf Too (1987). It has to be said, the laughs come more often in Reginald Hudlin's The Great White Hype (1996), as a promoter, the Reverend Fred Sultan (Samuel L. Jackson), seeks to boost interest in his heavyweight champion, James 'The Grim Reaper' Roper (Damon Wayans) by pitching him against demon challenger, Terry Conklin (Peter Berg), who is actually an amateur no-hoper.
A Nottingham boxing club gives some disaffected kids a purpose in life in Shane Meadows's Twenty Four Seven (1997), as coach Alan Darcy (Bob Hoskins) brings rival gang members together to take on a preening rival club. Best friends Vince Boudreau (Woody Harrelson) and Caesar Dominguez (Antonio Banderas) are forced to rethink their priorities in Ron Shelton's Play It to the Bone (1999), when they find themselves in opposite corners in a middleweight eliminator in Las Vegas. The same belt is up for grabs in Alex De Rakoff's The Calcium Kid (2004), a mockumentary that follows the fortunes of milkman Jimmy Connelly (Orlando Bloom), when manager Herbie Bush (Omad Djalili) lands him a shot against world champion, José Mendez (Michael Peña). Bloom would return to the ring in Sean Ellis's The Cut (2024), as a retired fighter struggling to lose weight before a Las Vegas comeback.
Neither Paul Hoen's Jump In! nor Charles Herman-Wurmfeld's The Hammer (both 2007) is currently available. But we can bring you Mark Noyce and Hamdy Taha's On the Ropes (2011), a mockumentary about the rival boxing gyms run by old-schooler Big Joe (Joe Egan) and the unconventional karate expert, Keith Kraft (Mark Noyce). Moreover, Cinema Paradiso has lined up Billy 'The Kid' McDonnen and Henry 'Razor' Sharp for an old foes showdown in Peter Segal's Grudge Match (2013). But what makes this comedy a bit special is the fact that the Pittsburgh veterans are respectively played by Robert De Niro and Sylvester Stallone, with the latter being goaded into a decider after the old adversaries reunite after many moons at a motion capture recording session for a video game.
Biopics
With so many champions having reached the top the hard way, it's not surprising that so many boxing biopics follow the conventions of the standard rite of passage drama. San Francisco bank clerk James J. Corbett (Errol Flynn) sees pugilism as the way to make his name in Raoul Walsh's Gentleman Jim (1942), even though boxing is illegal and not regulated by the Marquess of Queensberry Rules. Ward Bond took the role of John L. Sullivan, but it fell to Greg McClure in Frank Tuttle's The Great John L. (1945), which charts the rise to respectability of 'The Boston Strong Boy', with Rory Calhoun as Corbett.
It's a shame this duo is currently out of reach, as is the case with Robert Gordon's The Joe Louis Story (1953), which chronicles the prejudice-busting 'Brown Bomber' (Coley Wallace), who held the heavyweight title for a record 12 years. Wallace was a former Golden Gloves contender, but Paul Newman had only a handful of scraps from his Marine Corps days to draw upon when he was cast in Robert Wise's Somebody Up There Likes Me (1956) as Rocky Graziano, the onetime jailbird and US Army deserter who fought for the world middleweight title against Tony Zale (Court Shepard). Winning Oscars for its cinematography and set decoration, this unflinching study of degrading poverty and domestic abuse would pair well with André De Toth's Monkey on My Back (1957), which examines how Barney Ross (Cameron Mitchell) battled morphine addiction after quitting the ring.
But no boxing biopic delved into the darker side of life after the gloves had been hung up than Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull (1980), which examines how Jake LaMotta (Robert De Niro) insisted on fighting clean for the middleweight championship against Sugar Ray Robinson and how jealousy and excess ruined his relationships with brother Joey (Joe Pesci) and wife Vickie (Cathy Moriarty). All three actors earned Oscar nominations, but only De Niro won after gaining and shedding 60lbs to portray LaMotta at his peak and in his retirement. Thelma Schoonmaker also won for her exemplary editing, but it still beggars belief that Best Picture that year went to Robert Redford's Ordinary People.
While Cinema Paradiso can offer this masterpiece in high-quality DVD, Blu-ray, and 4K, it can't bring you Robert M. Young's Triumph of the Spirit (1989), even though it shows how Greek boxer Salamo Arouch (Willem Dafoe) was forced to fight for the amusement of the SS guards in Auschwitz. Touching upon a similar theme is Barry Levinson's The Survivor (2021), which reveals how Harry Haft (Ben Foster) sought to rebuild his life after the humiliations of concentration camp life by challenging such legends as Rocky Marciano.
Despite being arrested 38 times by the age of 13, Mike Tyson (Michael Jay White) emerged from penury in Brooklyn to become world heavyweight champion under the guidance of trainer Cus D'Amato (George C. Scott). But that's only part of the story in Uli Edel's Tyson (1995) and you can also forget what you thought you knew about the ace promoter who dominated American boxing in the 1970s, as Ving Rhames takes the title role and raises some hackles and eyebrows in
John Herzfeld's Don King: Only in America (1997).
Prison also plays a prominent part in the life of Rubin Carter in Norman Jewison's The Hurricane (1999), which saw Denzel Washington earn a Best Actor nomination for his performance as the middleweight whose title chances were shattered when he was framed for a murder that was immortalised in a Bob Dylan song. A fight with Joe Louis (Duane Davis) provides the focus of Charles Winkler's Rocky Marciano (1999), as it flashes back and forwards from the event to show how the young Rocco (Gil Filar) used boxing to escape Brockton, Massachusetts and how the older Marciano (Jon Favreau) coped with a later life that was to be tragically cut short.
Louis is also to the fore in Steve James's Joe and Max (2002) and Uwe Boll's Max Schmeling: Fist of the Reich (2010), with Leonard Roberts and Til Scheweiger taking the roles of the African American and the German whose rivalry was overshadowed by the pernicious racial politics of Adolf Hitler. Their legendary bouts were recreated for the latter film by Henry Maske and Yoan Pablo Hernández. Sacrifice is also the theme of Kwak Kyung-Taek's Champion (2002), which profiles South Korean boxer Kim Duk-koo (Yu Oh-seong), whose 1982 fight with Ray 'Boom Boom' Mancini at Caesar's Palace, Las Vegas would go down in boxing infamy.
Fact and fiction blur in Charles S. Dutton's Against the Ropes (2004), which is based on the career of Jackie Kallen (Meg Ryan), who became one of the first women boxing managers in 1988. Ron Howard also tinkers with the truth in Cinderella Man (2005), which chronicles how James J. Braddock (Russell Crowe) clawed his way out of Depression poverty by rising through the ranks to take on heavyweight champion, Max Baer (Craig Bierko). Paul Giamatti was nominated for Best Supporting Actor for his performance as Braddock's manager, Joe Gould.
Taught to box by a prison chaplain, Sonny Liston was one of the most feared fighters of his day and he's played with all his power and complexity by Ving Rhames in Robert Townsend's Phantom Punch (2008). Similarly showing how a champion navigated a troubled home life, David O. Russell's The Fighter (2010) centres on the relationships between light welterweight Micky Ward (Mark Wahlberg), half-brother Dicky Eklund (Christian Bale), and their pugnacious manager mother, Alice (Melissa Leo) from Lowell, Massachussets. Bale and Leo won Best Supporting Oscars, as the film picked up seven nominations.
The route that Welsh fighter Howard Winstone took to the world featherweight title in 1968 is traced in Neil Jones's Risen (2010), as the Merthyr Tydfil contender (Stuart Brennan) had to find a new fighting technique with coach Eddie Thomas (John Noble) after he lost three fingers on his right hand in an accident at work. Beating adversity is also the theme of Omung Kumar's Mary Kom (2014), the story of a five-time world champion and an Olympic bronze medallist that stars Priyanka Chopra as the girl from a family of landless labourers in Manipur who competed as a flyweight in London in 2012. At the same Games, 17 year-old Claressa 'T-Rex' Shields (Ryan Destiny) from Flint, Michigan went for middleweight gold, as Rachel Morrison reveals in The Fire Inside (2024). Perhaps even more inspirational is Ben Younger's Bleed For This (2016), which charts how Rhode Islander Vinny Pazienza (Miles Teller) battled back from a debilitating car crash to return to the ring under the guidance of his hard-drinking coach, Kevin Rooney (Aaron Eckhart).
From The Pazmanian Devil, we turn to Panamanian superstar Roberto Durán (Edgar Ramirez), whose career stretched from 1968 to 2002 and included a memorable welterweight showdown with Sugar Ray Leonard (Usher Raymond) in 1980. Maybe Jonathan Jakubowicz's Hands of Stone (2016) will become available, as it's quite a watch. As is Philippe Falardeau's The Bleeder (aka Chuck, 2016), which features a fine display by Liev Schreiber as Chuck Wepner, the New Jersey liquor salesman who went toe to toe for 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali (Pooch Hall) and inspired an Oscar-winning underdog story that we'll come on to in due course.
One of the most engaging boxing movies ever made, Juho Kuosmanen's The Happiest Day in the Life of Olli Mäki (2016), harks back to 1962 to show Finnish contender Olli Mäki (Jarkko Lahti) falling in love as he prepares for a crack at American featherweight champion, Davey Moore (John Bosco, Jr.). The lightness of touch is missing, however, from George Tillman, Jr.'s Big George Foreman: The Miraculous Story of the Once and Future Heavyweight Champion of the World (2023), even though Khris Davis gives a committed performance as the champ who leaves the pulpit to take a shot at becoming the oldest title-holder in history.
Jean-Stéphane Sauvaire demonstrates how British boxer Billy Moore (Joe Cole) survived Thailand's most notorious prison in A Prayer Before Dawn (2017). But Daniel Graham takes us back to the turn of the turn of the 19th century for Prizefighter (2022), as Jem Belcher (Matt Hookings) hires trainer Bill Warr (Ray Winstone) so that he can follow grandfather Jack Slack (Russell Crowe) in becoming the champion bare-knuckle boxer of All England. While fanciful, this is well worth a watch and we can but hope we can one day bring you The Featherweight (2023), which sees director
Robert Kolodny brings us forward over 150 years to 1964, as a documentary crew follows two-time featherweight champion Willie Pep (James Madio), as he prepares to come out of retirement to care for his Italian immigrant parents, his drug-addled son, and the young wife who has dreams of becoming an actress.
Boxumentaries
As we mentioned above, Stanley Kubrick made a boxing film in his early days, with Day of the Fight (1951) scouring Manhattan in the hours before middleweights Walter Cartier and Bobby James take to the ring. Look out for the boxing scenes in Killer's Kiss (1955), The Killing (1956), and Barry Lyndon (1975). Sadly, Kubrick's 12-minute mood piece isn't currently on disc in this country. But it should be, along with Harry Chapin's Legendary Champions (1968), an Oscar-nominated survey of early boxing history between 1880-1929.
Also missing are two contrasting studies of racism in sport: Southpaw: The Francis Barrett Story (1999), Liam McGrath's profile of an Irish Traveller who fought at the Olympics; and Ken Burns's Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004), which celebrates the achievements of 'The Galveston Giant', who became the first Black heavyweight champion in 1908. We can, however, present Stevan Riley's Blue Blood (2006), which follows five students trying to make the Oxford University Amateur Boxing Club squad for the Varsity match against Cambridge.
Also available is Diego Luna's J.C. Chávez: The Ultimate Mexican Hero (2007), which sees the renowned actor make his directorial debut in paying tribute to Julio César Chávez, the street kid who went on to win six world titles across four different weights. Don King, Oscar De La Hoya, and Mike Tyson are among the talking heads, although the focus falls firmly on the latter in James Toback's Tyson (2008), in which the fearsome heavyweight reflects on the triumphs and implosions of a chequered career.
Although we don't have Boxing Gym (2010), there's something of Frederick Wiseman in Andrew Lang's Sons of Cuba (2009), a fascinating fly-on-the-wall account of how three nine year-olds are plucked off the street and put through eight months of intense training at the fabled Havana Boxing Academy in order to compete in the national Under-12s championships, which are taking place against the backdrop of Fidel Castro falling ill. Equally riveting is Ian Palmer's Knuckle (2011), which was compiled over 12 years, as the bare-knuckle rivalry between three Irish Traveller families - the Joyces, the Nevins, and the Quinn-McDonaghs - becomes increasingly bitter and brutal.
Ukrainian siblings Vitali and Wladimir are lionised in Sebastian Dehnhardt's Klitschko (2011), while their role in resisting the Russian invasion is commended in Kevin Macdonald and Edgar Dubrovskiy's Klitschko: More Than a Fight (2024). By contrast, Zachary Heinzerling's Cutie and the Boxer (2013) examines the 40-year marriage of boxer artist Ushio Shinohara and his wife, Noriko, who has found late-life fame with a series of drawings based on the couple's unique existence in New York.
Back in the clinches, Liam Neeson narrates Leon Gast and Ryan Moore's Manny (2014), which follows Filipino sensation Manny Pacquiao from childhood poverty to becoming the only fighter to win 12 titles across eight weight divisions. The streets of Hoxton are where Lenny McLean learnt his bare-knuckle trade, as Paul Van Carter explains in The Guv'nor (2016), which charts how this East End enforcer became a familiar face thanks to Guy Ritchie's Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels (1998).
Leeds is the metropolis that inspires two-time featherweight champion Josh Warrrington, as we discover in Greg Hardes and Jacob Proud's Fighting For a City (2018). But, as Mat Hodgson outlines in I Am Durán (2019), Roberto Durán carried the hopes of an entire nation for five decades, particularly during the dictatorship of Manuel Noriega that brought Panama to its knees. There are lots more boxing documentaries among Cinema Paradiso's 100,000 titles, so type 'boxing' into the Searchline and see what takes your fancy.
Bomaye!
No boxer has been the subject of more films than Muhammad Ali. And with good reason, as he was so much more than a sportsman, as his fighting instinct drew him to causes that didn't always endear him to the boxing authorities. His most iconic fights were still in the future when Jim Jacobs produced a.k.a. Cassius Clay (1970), which follows Cassius Marcellus Clay, Jr. from Olympic gold medal success at 18 to becoming the youngest world champion at the age of 21. However, Jacobs also assesses the political and religious evolution that brought Muhammad Ali into the orbits of Malcolm X and the Honourable Elijah Muhammad, an evolution that is also explored in Muta'Ali Muhammad's Cassius X: Becoming Ali (2023).
Photographer William Klein's Muhammad Ali: The Greatest (1969) is also essential for all fight fans, as it charts the difficulties that Ali faced when he refused the Vietnam draft and lost his licence to box before he returned to prove the doubters wrong in an epic showdown with George Foreman. The Rumble in the Jungle on 30 October 1974 was far more than a title bout, as Leon Gast reveals in the Oscar-winning masterpiece, When We Were Kings (1996), which has a companion piece in Jeffrey Kusama-Hinte's Soul Power (2008), which recalls the cultural festival that was held in the Zairean capital, Kinshasa, in the days before the fight that saw Ali establish himself as an African hero.
Jack Murphy's record of the clash, Rumble in the Jungle is joined on a double bill with Thrilla in Manila (1975), which centres on Ali's grudge match with Joe Frazier. This is further scrutinised in Thriller in Manila (2008) by John Dower, who also directed Ali: The Greatest of All Time (2010), which includes insights from legendary trainer, Angelo Dundee.
The early years leading up to the 1964 confrontation with Sonny Liston preoccupy John Sacret Young in Muhammad Ali: King of the World (2000). While this celebrates the 'Louisville Lip' at his peak, Phil Grabsky lets family, friends, and fans do the talking in Muhammad Ali: Through the Eyes of the World (2001), which offers a fresher perspective on Ali's legacy than more standard documentaries like Muhammad Ali: The Legend (2001), Muhammad Ali: Then and Now (2004), Muhammad Ali: Fighting Spirit, Ali: The Man, the Moves, the Mouth (both 2008), and Ali: In His Own Words (1974). Standing out from these is Dimitri Logothetis's Champions Forever (1989), which is an expanded edition of a classic heavyweight survey that includes previously unseen footage of Ali's clashes with Ken Norton and Larry Holmes. The latter fight was filmed in 1980 by Albert Maysles and his footage forms the basis of Bradley Caplan's ESPN actuality, Muhammad and Larry (2009), which reveals how Holmes was reluctant to hit his hero, who had already started to show signs of the Parkinson's Disease that would be diagnosed in 1984.
Holmes and Norton join Foreman, Frazier, Henry Cooper, and Leon Spinks in describing what it was like to share the ring with a one-off talent in Peter McCormack's Facing Ali (2009). The approach is more generic in Billy Simpson's Muhammad Ali: The Greatest (2013), which pales beside Ken Burns's definitive profile, Muhammad Ali (2021), which devotes seven hours to the three-time champion and the controversies that dogged him outside the ring. The crisis that left Ali facing a five-year prison sentence come under the spotlight in Bill Siegel's The Trials of Muhammad Ali (2013), while Clare Lewins draws on the boxer's audio journals in I Am Ali (2014), which includes contributions from the family members and rivals who knew him best.
Never one to shy away from the cameras, Ali decided to play himself in Tom Gries's biopic, The Greatest (1977). However, Will Smith acquitted himself admirably in Michael Mann's Ali (2001), which landed a Best Actor nomination for Smith and Best Supporting recognition for Jon Voight as commentator Howard Cosell.
The man himself doesn't appear in Stephen Frears's Muhammad Ali's Greatest Fight (2013). But this teleplay provides a fascinating insight into the Supreme Court discussions that led to Ali's licence being reinstated after he had refused to fight in Vietnam on moral grounds. Christopher Plummer, Frank Langella, and Danny Glover) lead a fine cast. Kingsley Ben-Adir, Eli Goree, Aldis Hodge, and the Oscar-nominated Leslie Odom, Jr. similarly give a solid account of themselves in Regina King's One Night in Miami... (2020), as Malcolm X, Cassius Clay, footballer-turned-actor Jim Brown, and singer Sam Cooke meet in a hotel room in the hours after the Sonny Liston fight on 25 February 1964.
Contenders
Since an earl's sister boosted a contender's chances in Frank Wilson's The White Hope (1915), film-makers have been churning out boxing movies. Some took a novel approach and cast real-life fighters in principal roles, such as J. Harrison Edwards's Square Joe (1922), which starred Joe Jeanette and John Lester Johnson.
British boxers were also lured into the studio, with A.E. Colby's Kent, the Fighting Man (1916) being headlined by Bombardier Billy Wells, the first winner of the Lonsdale Belt for heavyweight who would go on to bang the gong at the start of many a film produced by the Rank Organisation. Future Hollywood icon Ronald Colman donned the gloves in Hay Plumb's A Son of David (1920), while Stewart Rome starred with Violet Hopson in the 1915 and 1922 versions of Frank Wilson's The White Hope. The best-known silent British boxing picture, however, is Alfred Hitchcock's The Ring (1927), which sees fairground pug 'One Round' Jack Sander (Carl Brisson) become the sparring partner of Australian heavyweight champion, Bob Corby (Ian Hunter), only for the novice to become jealous when girlfriend Mabel (Lillian Hall-Davis) receives a bracelet from his new boss.
Another noted director who took a crack at a boxing story was William Wyler, who focussed on a journeyman who decides to stop taking a fall for easy cash in The Shakedown (1929). This isn't ever likely to come to disc, nor is Tod Browning's Iron Man (1931), even though it pairs Jean Harlow and Lew Ayres, as the champion who lets success go to his head. Not even the presence of James Cagney could help the cause of Roy Del Ruth's Winner Take All (1932), which centres on a washed-up fighter battling to help a young widow. Cagney returned to the ring as Young Samson in order to put kid brother Arthur Kennedy through music school in Anatole Litvak's City For Conquest (1940).
Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. took the lead in Archie Mayo's The Life of Jimmy Dolan (1932), which was remade by Busby Berkeley as They Made Me a Criminal (1939), with John Garfield as the champion caught up in a murder. John Wayne had a bit part in the former, but he had moved up the cast list to star as a bare-knuckle fighter who throws bouts for a living in David Howards's Conflict (1936). Robert Taylor also got to witness the darker side of the sport in Richard Thorpe's The Crowd Roars (1938), which was remade by Roy Rowland as Killer McCoy (1947), with Mickey Rooney as the lightweight who is charged with manslaughter after a fight.
A title contender is poisoned and dies mid-fight in James Tinling's Mr Moto's Gamble (1938). But the Japanese sleuth (Peter Lorre) discovers that big money was wagered on the bout and he makes himself a target when he announces that he will identify the killer before the challenger takes on champion, Biff Moran (Ward Bond). British pug Jimmy Hanley discovers that there's little honour among those running the sport in Pen Tennyson's There Ain't No Justice (1939), which can be rented from Cinema Paradiso on Volume 8 of the Ealing Studios Rarities Collection. Several examples of the work of Oscar Michaux can be found on Pioneers of African-American Cinema (2016). But the BFI didn't think to include The Notorious Elinor Lee (1940), which stars Gladys Williams as a Harlem gangster's moll who bets against the fighter she manages. June Allyson would also discover that boxing is a tough place for a woman when she takes over her father's promotion business in John Sturges's Right Cross (1950).
Dane Clark's struggling artist agrees to let scarred ex-pug Zachary Scott manage him in Lewis Seiler's noir, Whiplash (1948), while injury also proves the undoing of Terence de Marney, who is lured off the straight and narrow by girlfriend Beryl (Eleanor Summerfield) in Stefan Osiecki's No Way Back (1949). Star Trek fans will be keen to track down Harold D. Schuster's Kid Monk Baroni (1952), as Leonard Nimoy plays the boxer who can't escape his gang past in Little Italy, while Dixon of Dock Green aficionados will want to rent Basil Dearden's The Square Ring (1953), as Jack Warner stars as the dressing-room handler at Adams Stadium, where brash kids, comeback hopefuls, rising stars, and title contenders share their thoughts before making their ring walk.
Despite Marlon Brando's iconic speech in which Terry Malloy laments having been a contender before he bought a one-way ticket to Palookaville in Elia Kazan's Oscar winner, On the Waterfront (1954), boxing films fell from favour for a couple of decades before Charles Bronson barked his knuckles to survive the Depression in 1930s Louisiana in Walter Hill's Hard Times (1975), which co-starred James Coburn as Bronson's hustling sidekick. The illegal contests are organised by prison warder Chuck Mitchell, as Leon Isaac Kennedy earns the respect of his cellmates in Jamaa Fanaka's blaxploitation saga, Penitentiary (1979), which was followed by the sequels, Penitentiary II (1982) and Penitentiary III (1987).
Ex-fighter Tommy Lee Jones goes on the lam with Alabama hooker Sally Field in Martin Ritt's Back Roads (1981), while struggling Texas musician Dennis Quaid tries his hand at prizefighting in Richard Fleischer's Tough Enough (1983). While these are currently unobtainable, along with David Drury's Split Decisions (1988), in which trainer Gene Hackman's loyalties are divided between sons Craig Sheffer and Jeff Fahey, Cinema Paradiso can offer James Lemmo's Heart (1987), which sees scheming promoter Steve Buscemi persuade punch-drunk Brad Davis to give up driving trucks and play the fall guy for his upcoming rookie.
Johnny Walker (Mickey Rourke) refuses to let a fractured forehead prevent him from tilting at a purse that could save his beloved's business in Michael Seresin's Homeboy (1988). However, corrupt promoter Wesley Pendergrass (Christopher Walken) wants his boy to use his muscle on a jewel robbery. Shady dealers also put Scot Danny Soular (Liam Neeson) in danger when he loses his mining job and turns to bare-knuckle boxing in David Leland's The Big Man (1990). Coming south to Liverpool, Ronnie O'Dowd (Margi Clarke) follows in the footsteps of her Scottish street-brawling father when she finds herself on the run in New York and joins the Knucklers boxing club in Frank Clarke's Blonde Fist (1991).
The Brit in exile in John G. Avildsen's The Power of One (1992) is Peter Keith (Stephen Dorff), who discovers the harsh realities of life in South Africa either side of the Second World War. Morgan Freeman co-stars as the boxing coach who teaches PK the rope, while Daniel Craig makes his screen debut as the army officer who had bullied him at school. Released the same year, Michael Ritchie's Diggstown sees con man Gabriel Caine (James Woods) bet town bigwig John Gilion (Bruce Dern) that 'Honey' Roy Palmer (Louis Gossett, Jr.) can knock out 10 local men in a single day. Also dating from 1992 are Rowdy Harrington's Gladiator, which sees Chicagoan Tommy Riley (James Marshall) join an illegal circuit; Ron Howard's Far and Away, in which Irish exile Joseph Donnelly (Tom Cruise) becomes a carnival boxer to support himself and Shannon Christie (Nicole Kidman); and Irwin Winkler's Night and the City, in which crooked lawyer Harry Fabian (Robert De Niro) decides to muscle in on the patch of all-powerful boxing promoter, Ira 'Boom Boom' Grossman (Alan King).
The remarkable thing about Kids Return (1996) is not the storyline that sees school pals Shinji (Masanobu Ando) and Masaru (Ken Kaneko) respectively drift into boxing and yakuza crime, but that Takeshi Kitano directed the film shortly after being left paralysed in a motorcycle accident. Less surprising is the fact that Daniel Day-Lewis trained with Barry McGuigan for over a year in order to play Danny Flynn, the former IRA man from Belfast who wants to quit the cause after serving 14 years in prison in Jim Sheridan's The Boxer (1997). The stakes are also high when Blackpool bare-knuckle scrapper Craig (Steve Bell) hooks up with London music promoter, Matt (Ian Rose), whose boss (Roger Daltrey) wants him to focus on launching his new band in Paul Oremland's gay drama, Like It Is (1998).
Also released in 1998, Peter MacDonald's Legionnaire sees Jean-Claude Van Damme join the Foreign Legion after he refuses to throw a fight with a ton of money resting on it. An office drone (Edward Norton) gets a second chance when he starts an underground bare-knuckle club with soap salesman Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt) in David Fincher's Fight Club (1999). Pitt also appears as Irish Traveller Mickey O'Neil, who agrees to a bare-knuckle fight to help hapless promoter Turkish (Jason Statham) get one over on remorseless rival 'Brick Top' Pulford (Alan Ford) in Guy Ritchie's Snatch (2000).
The past forever lurks in the background in John Irvin's Shiner, as Billy Simpson (Michael Caine) comes to regret putting everything he had on his son in a bout with an American champion. Jimmy Smits patiently trains his three sons so that they can succeed where he failed in Carlos Avila's Price of Glory (both 2000). However, the family starts to fracture when one boy decides he stands a better chance with another trainer.
Brooklyn student Diana Guzman (Michelle Rodriguez) defies her father (Paul Calderón) in order to take up boxing in Karyn Kusama's abrasively persuasive Girlfight (2000). But Walter Hill ramps up the realism in Undisputed (2002), as world champion George 'The Iceman' Chambers (Ving Rhames) is jailed for rape and mob boss Mendy Ripstein (Peter Falk) sets him up for a duel with ruthless inmate, Monroe Hutchen (Wesley Snipes). Such was the success of the film that it was followed by three sequels: Isaac Fiorentino's Undisputed II: Last Man Standing (2007) and Undisputed III: Redemption (2010), and Todor Chapkanov's Boyka Undisputed (2017).
A school for the Nazi elite provides the setting for Dennis Gansel's Napola (aka Before the Fall, 2004), which sees 16 year-old Friedrich Weimer (Max Riemelt) risk his chance to become a boxer when his best friend, Albrecht Stein (Tom Schilling), is punished for questioning party ideology. The scene shifts to an American naval academy in Justin Lin's Annapolis (2006), which sees struggling cadet James Franco earn a shot at redemption through a midshipman's boxing contest. Perhaps Cinema Paradiso members of a military bent might like to try this in a double bill with John Ford's The Long Gray Line (1955), which stars Tyrone Power as West Point boxing instructor Marty Maher, who had started out as a servant at the academy after stepping off the boat from Ireland.
Sportswriter Erik Kernan (Josh Hartnett) decides to embroider the legend when he discovers that the homeless Denver man who calls himself 'Champ' (Samuel L. Jackson) is, in fact, onetime heavyweight contender Bob Satterfield in Rod Lurie's Resurrecting the Champ (2007). The streets of New York are where Shawn MacArthur (Channing Tatum) scrapes a living selling knock-off merchandise. But he enters a new world when a grizzled coach named Martinez (Luis Guzmán) coaxes into the fight game in Dito Montiel's Fighting (2009). Shady goings-on are also key to Malcolm Martin's Sucker Punch (2008), as Ray 'Harley' Davidson (Danny John-Jules) seeks to bring down London porn baron, Victor Maitland (Ian Freeman), by beating his best boy in a bare-knuckle showdown.
School janitor Steve Austin gives bullied newcomer Daniel Magder a few self-defence tips in Anne Wheeler's Born to Fight (aka Knockout). However, futuristic humans no longer trade blows in Shawn Levy's Real Steel (both 2011), so ex-fighter Charlie Kenton (Hugh Jackman) builds a fighting robot named Atom to take on Zeus, who has been designed by inventor Tak Mashido (Karl Yune). Jackman's quest is complicated by the need to get to know his estranged son. In Dan Turner's The Man Inside (2012), hopeful Clayton Murdoch (Ashley Thomas) channels the pain from his childhood into his boxing. But, in order to get to the next level, he needs the help of the detested gangster father (David Harewood), who is languishing in jail.
Having failed to make the grade, Corey Stoll hopes to relive the glory days by setting up some dodgy fights with New York fixer Billy Crudup in Noah Buschel's Glass Chin (2014). Getting back to his best is the challenge facing Billy Hope (Jake Gyllenhaal), when he pulls himself out of a downward spiral following the murder of his wife in Antoine Fuqua's Southpaw (2015) and he bids to win back both his young daughter and his light heavyweight crown. Redemption also drives Benjamin (Stephen Graham) in David Leon's Orthodox (2015), as he learns to box after being bullied for being Jewish, only to risk losing his family when he is drawn into the world of illegal bare-knuckle bouts. Family ties also make things difficult for Anthony Rodriguez (William DeMeo), the Italian-Puerto Rican son of a violent father and a devoted mother who wills him on to a shot at the world middleweight title in Paul Borghese's Brooklyn's Greatest (2016).
Three boxing pictures were made in the UK in 2017, led off by Ron Scalpello's My Name Is Lenny, which covers the unlicenced rivalry between a couple of known Kray associates, Lenny 'The Guv'nor' McLean (Josh Helman) and Roy 'Pretty Boy' Shaw (Michael Bisping). Jimmy McCabe (Johnny Harris) has lost his self-respect since quitting the ring. But a trip back to his old gym sees owner Bill (Ray Winstone), cornerman Eddie (Michael Smiley), and promoter Joe (Ian McShane) all ready to give him another chance in Thomas Napper's Jawbone. Getting up off the canvas proves even more difficult for Matty Burton (Paddy Considine) after he collapses following a world middleweight defence and has to relearn how to use his body, with the help of his wife, Emma (Jodie Whittaker), in Paddy Considine's Journeyman.
Women's boxing takes centre stage in Jessica Hynes's The Fight and Carmel Winters's Float Like a Butterfly (both 2018). The former centres on care home nurse and mother of three Tina Bell (Hynes), who takes up boxing as a release from the pressures of her parents (Anita Dobson and Christopher Fairbank) ageing and her daughter (Sennia Nanua) being bullied by a classmate (Liv Hill) whose mother (Rhona Mitra) had tormented her at school. In the latter, 15 year-old Frances (Hazel Doupe) seeks to make her Irish Traveller father proud by living up to the example set by her hero, Muhammad Ali.
Postwar Japan provides the setting for Adam VillaSenor and Reza Ghassemi's In Full Bloom, which sees the undefeated Masahiro (Yusuke Ogasawara) preparing for a championship bout with American Clint Sullivan (Tyler Wood), who is still struggling with his combat experiences. Also released in 2019, Takashi Miike's First Love follows boxer Leo (Masataka Kubota) as he seeks solace after a devastating medical diagnosis and finds it in the form of call girl Monica (Sakurako Konishi), who unintentionally drags him into a drug-smuggling scheme.
It's back to bare-knuckle basics in Max Winkler's Jungleland (2019), as brothers Stanley (Charlie Hunnam) and Lion (Jack O'Connell) are forced to enter a high-stakes tournament to meet a debt to a callous crime boss (Jonathan Majors). A Native American boxer (Kali Reis) inveigles herself into a sex-trafficking gang in order to find her missing sister in Josef Kubota Wladyka's Catch the Fair One (2021). And risking all for love is also the message of Welby Ings's Punch (2022), as promising New Zealand boxer Jordan Oosterhof knows he will break dying father Tim Roth's heart when he falls for unruly Maori teenager, Conan Hayes.
Classics
Everyone will have their own ideas about what constitutes a classic. But, when it comes to boxing films, the canon is so well established that this Cinema Paradiso selection is based on unanimous verdicts rather than points decisions.
Wallace Beery won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his work in King Vidor's The Champ (1931). He shared the Oscar with Fredric March for Ruben Mamoulian's Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (1932), but Beery had to deal with scene-stealing tyke Jackie Cooper, as former champion Andy Purcell battles his addictions to drink and gambling under the adoring gaze of his son, Dink. The names changed to Billy Flynn and TJ, when Jon Voight and Ricky Schroder took on the roles in Franco Zeffirelli's The Champ (1979). Voight, who had previously boxed in Charles Eastman's The All American Boy (1973), earned a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actor, while his nine year-old co-star became the youngest winner in Globes history when he was named Best New Male Star of the Year in a Motion Picture.
Another film to help set the rules of the boxing movie was Rouben Mamoulian's 1939 adaptation of Clifford Odets's stage play, Golden Boy, which centres on the tugs of war involving Joe Bonaparte (William Holden), a promising violinist who wants to box. Both his Italian father (Lee J. Cobb) and his hard-up manager, Tom Moody (Adolphe Menjou), have very strong views on the subject. As does Lorna Moon (Barbara Stanwyck), who owes everything to her boss, but can't help falling in love with his prodigy. Contrast the sentiment in this storyline with the gritty realism in Robert Rossen's Body and Soul (1947), which explores how success and a shady promoter (Lloyd Gough) force East Side middleweight Charley Davis (John Garfield) to take his eyes of the prize, even though he does the right thing by blacklisted African American fighter, Ben Chaplin (Canada Lee). Garfield was nominated for Best Actor for this anti-capitalist allegory, whose eight-camera fight coverage by James Wong Howe and Oscar-winning editing by Robert Parrish had a considerable effect on Raging Bull.
Two boxing classics were released in 1949. Robert Wise's The Set-Up is an exemplary blend of film noir and problem picture that explores the pressures being heaped upon ageing time-server Bill Thompson (Robert Ryan) by wife Julie (Audrey Trotter), who wants him to retire, and manager Tiny (George Tobias), who is so convinced that Stoker is going to lose his next bout that he has cut a deal with the mob (without telling his charge) for him to take a dive. This simmering study of life behind the scenes on fight night failed to attract any award buzz, but Kirk Douglas was nominated for Best Actor for winning a fight he was supposed to throw as the resistibly ambitious Michael 'Midge' Kelly in Mark Robson's Champion. Despite his treachery in shooting for the top, brother Connie (Arthur Kennedy) and shotgun wife Emma (Ruth Roman) stick by Midge, as he hooks up with a new manager with mob connections.
Footage of Douglas in the ring was recycled for John Mallory Asher's Diamonds (1999), in which the veteran plays Harry Agensky, a long-retired fighter. who is striving to recover from a stroke. However, Mark Robson's The Harder They Fall (1956) proved to be the end of the road for Humphrey Bogart, who plays line-towing journalist Eddie Willis, who becomes the press agent for Nick Benko (Rod Steiger), a bent promoter who is in cahots with a crime syndicate to ensure that glass-jawed Argentine, Toro Moreno (Mike Lane) gets a tilt at the title. Inspired by Primo Carnera's successes in the mid-1930s, the source novel was written by former boxing commentator, Budd Schulberg.
Staying with the Italian theme, Luchino Visconti's Rocco and His Brothers (1960) is one of European cinema's finest boxing pictures, as siblings Simone (Renato Salvatori) and Rocco Parondi (Alain Delon) take to the ring in Milan to help feed the family, only to fall out over a prostitute named Nadia (Annie Girardot).
Jack Palance had headlined the Peabody-winning TV version of Rod Serling's Requiem For a Heavyweight, while Sean Connery had got his big break in the 1957 BBC adaptation. But it was Anthony Quinn who played Luis 'Mountain' Rivera in Ralph Nelson's 1962 big screen take on the story of a faded fighter who is advised to retire on taking a beating from Cassius Clay (yes, him). Employment clerk, Grace Miller (Julie Harris), pleads with Mountain to find a new line of work. But trainer Maish Rennick (Jackie Gleason) and cutman Army (Mickey Rooney) want him to try his hand at wrestling to help them pay off some gambling debts.
James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander earned Oscar nominations for reprising their Broadway roles in Martin Ritt's The Great White Hope (1970), which was based on the life of Jack Johnson and sees Jack Jefferson being subjected to prejudice in his professional and personal life in the 1910s, when his marriage to a white woman antagonises both the boxing authorities and the general public. There's no excuse for this important film not being on disc in this country. But Cinema Paradiso does have John Huston's Fat City (1972), a hard-nosed study of the fight game that pulls no punches in showing how has-been Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) takes time out from flirting with skid row barfly Oma Lee Greer (an Oscar-nominated Susan Tyrell) to try and ensure that protégé Ernie Munger (Jeff Bridges) avoids repeating the same mistakes that he had made.
Authenticity is also key to Clint Eastwood's Million Dollar Baby (2004), which was based on Rope Burns: Stories From the Corner, which had been written by manager and cutman Jerry Boyd under the pen name, F.X. Toole. Eastwood won Best Picture and Best Director in addition to playing Frankie Dunn, a veteran Los Angeles trainer who is persuaded by assistant Eddie 'Scrap-Iron' Dupris to take on Ozark newcomer, Maggie Fitzgerald (Hilary Swank), because he thinks she has something special. Swank and Freeman also won Oscars for their work, while screenwriter Paul Haggis and editor Joel Cox were both nominated.
Amidst all these classics, one film stands above all others when it comes to the lore of screen boxing and things might have been very different had Henry Winkler not been able to use his clout as The Fonz from Happy Days (1974-84) to buy back a Sylvester Stallone script that was going to be made as a TV-movie. Furthermore, would Rocky (1976) have become so iconic had Stallone not insisted on taking the lead when the studio wanted to cast Robert Redford, James Caan, Ryan O'Neal, or Burt Reynolds as Rocky Balboa? And would his chemistry have been as good with Carrie Snodgress, Susan Sarandon, and Cher as pet shop assistant Adriana Pennino instead of Talia Shire?
For all the 'what ifs', John G. Avildsen's film made virtues of its clichés, as it charts the rise of an amateur boxer from Philadelphia, who is given a crack at world champion Apollo Creed (Carl Weathers) to mark America's bicentenary. Iconic scenes including the training montages and the sprint up the Museum of Modern Art steps caught the spirit of the country and reminded audiences further afield of the founding principles of the United States. Stallone was nominated for his performance and his writing, alongside Shire and Burgess Meredith and Burt Young, who respectively played Rocky's trainer, Mickey Goldmill, and Adrian's brother, Paulie. Somehow Bill Conti missed out for his score, but the Best Picture winner also landed Best Director and Best Editing for Richard Halsey and Scott Conrad.
The ending cued up an inevitable sequel, with Stallone taking to the director's chair for Rocky II (1979), which centres on the rematch that Creed demands in order to show that the first fight had been a freak. Stallone continued to call the shots in Rocky III (1982), as 'The Italian Stallion' has to call on Creed's expertise to help him overcome punching machine, Clubber Lang (Mr T). Driven by the Oscar-nominated song, 'Eye of the Tiger', this became the highest-grossing entry in the franchise.
But the reviews were mixed and the Cold War theme moiling beneath Rocky IV (1985) found little favour, as a grieving Rocky seeks to avenge his friend after Creed is killed by Soviet titan, Ivan Drago (Dolph Lundgren). Curiously, the reception for the director's cut, Rocky IV: Rocky vs Drago (2021), was much more positive, as Stallone replaced 38 minutes of the original movie with previously unseen footage.
Most people thought they had seen the last of Rocky and Adrian. But Stallone rummaged in the big bag of cornball scenarios and had the Stallion return to action after being chiselled by his accountant in Rocky V (1990). This time, however, he's merely the trainer to Tommy Gunn (Tommy Morrison), an underdog from Oklahoma, who is lined up to fight champion Urban Cane (Michael Williams). Avildsen resumed the director's chair, while Sage Stallone played his father's son, Robert. The reviews and takings were disappointing. But Stallone couldn't resist a last tilt and the result was Rocky Balboa (2006), which sees our 60 year-old widowed hero leave the small restaurant he's running to fight an exhibition bout with the cocky Mason Dixon (Antonio Tarver). Ending the series on a positive note and with something of a box-office bounce, Stallone seemed content.
But Ryan Coogler coaxed him back into the gym to train Apollo's son, Adonis Creed (Michael B. Jordan) in Creed (2015) and Stallone stunned everyone by earning an Oscar nomination for Best Supporting Actor to add to his Golden Globe win. With one of the bouts being staged at Everton's Goodison Park, this reboot backed-up critical acclaim with commercial clout and Stallone and Jordan returned to the fray in Steven Caple, Jr.'s Creed II (2018), as Adonis squares up to Viktor Drago (Florian Munteanu), who just happens to be the son of Rocky's old adversary, Ivan (Dolph Lundgren).
Once again, the numbers added up and Jordan seized his chance to direct Creed III (2023), which saw Stallone content himself with a co-producing credit. With Adonis now retired and running a gym, he agrees to return a favour owed to childhood friend Damian Anderson (Jonathan Majors) by letting him fight world champion Felix Chavez (José Benavidez, Jr.) after Viktor Drago is forced to withdraw. Given that the threequel posted the spin-off's best numbers, a fourth instalment was always going to be likely. Jordan has confirmed it will happen. But Cinema Paradiso has dozens of other titles to keep fight fans happy until Creed IV hits our screens.
