Day of the Fight (1951)

User Rating:

6.6/10   

Director:

Stanley Kubrick

Writer:

Robert Rein (narration script)

Release Date:

26 April 1951 (USA)

Genre:

Documentary | Short | Sport

Plot:

Based on Kubrick's pictorial for Look Magazine (January 18, 1949) entitled "Prizefighter," "Day Of The...

Plot Keywords:

Look Magazine | Boxing | Narration

Cast

Douglas Edwards

...

Narrator (voice)

Runtime:

16 min | 13 min (TCM print)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Aspect Ratio:

1.37 : 1

Sound Mix:

Mono

Filming Locations:

West 12th Street, Greenwich Village, Manhattan, New York City, New York, USA

Trivia:

The film premiered as part of RKO-Pathé's "This Is America" series and opened at the Paramount Theater in New York on 26 April 26 1951 as a short subject in a program featuring My Forbidden Past (1951). Headlining in a live stage show was Frank Sinatra, which also featured an appearance by blond bombshell Dagmar.

Quotes:

Narrator: This is a fight fan. Fan -- short for fanatic. There's a legion just like him in the United States. Each year he shoves his share of ninety million dollars under the wicket for the privilege of attending places where matched pairs of men will get up on a canvas-covered platform and commit legal assault and lawful battery.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Raging Bull (1980)

more than anything a student film- but one with enough to look at

It's true, I would not know anything about this short RKO-type documentary if not for the fact that it was the first time that iconoclast Stanley Kubrick picked up a camera with rolling film stock to be screened in theaters. But as a student filmmaker myself, I find it of the utmost fascination - even when it is in a jittery, ragged print like the one I obtained on video - to see the early, primitive works of famous directors (Last Year in Vietnam by Stone, My Best Friend's Birthday by Tarantino, and Les Mistons by Truffaut are others) and the foundations of style. Day of the Fight, to be sure, is not something of incredible note, and it would not be until the Killing that Kubrick would create a great film. Yet through this film, I was constantly aware- and pleased- by how this very typical kind of story was executed.

In a way, it's almost of more worth to watch this film with the sound off; the narration, while good at getting to know the very basics of this boxer that's being profiled, it's also a distraction and not very revelatory. As just a succession of images, however, it works a lot more. It's the kind of short documentary that is 70% real, and 30% staged, with Kubrick following the boxer and his brother on the streets of New York, leading up to the fight that will bring him recognition. When looking at how Kubrick uses the camera, it seems fairly simple and, for those looking for all of the Kubrick trademarks, disappointing. But in just looking at how he uses the camera, how he gets his subjects in frame, and the importance of composition and the subtleties of lighting, it's really quite good. And the fight sequence, filmed by Kubrick and a friend, has some cut-away shots that almost ring of the future of Scorsese's Raging Bull (though, of course, still primitive).

Is it more of a curiosity, a film for Kubrick die-hard completists looking to have all 16 of his works, docs and features, in their collection? Sure, but it is also one of the better short doc's he made in his formative years, taking a subject he was already interested in (he was a photographer for Look magazine with this boxer under profile) and going a step further. As his sort of film school, this is in terms of the image even more fascinating than the lackluster 'doodle on the fridge' film Fear and Desire.