|
To William Wellman the arrival of sound is a matter of rhythm, thus the pug at the gym (Richard Arlen) slugging the punching bag to the strains drifting from the music store next door: "I'll play with me timing." A braggart in his element, he becomes a little boy when asking the pianist (Mary Brian) out on a date. A virtuoso shot tracks him to the dressing room but remains outside to observe an argument with the manager through the door window, then follows him to the bustling ring and floats over to the apprehensive gal in the audience. (Scorsese's revision of it in Raging Bull is unmistakable.) "A sock in the jaw is a sock in the jaw anyplace," they get hitched and ride to New York in a livestock car, "guess this is the bridal suite." The newlyweds share a tune as the camera tilts up to a staring horse, the needle scratch on the Victrola turntable goes into The Public Enemy. Rise of the champeen, already an old tale but told with oodles of vitality, Herman J. Mankiewicz's script even includes a sprinkling of pig Latin. The East Coast temptation is a society vixen (Olga Baclanova) introduced by a young Jack Oakie: "It ain't legal for a tabloid to be printed without at least two pictures of that dame." A domestic row is staged amid newspaper clippings with a mirror in the background, the drunken protagonist knocks himself out and awakens to an empty home, a sudden overhead angle in the middle of the climactic Madison Square Garden fight turns the opponents into marbles on the canvas. "The boxer and the poet," that's Wellman all over. With Harry Green, Pat O'Malley, Leslie Fenton, and Charles Sullivan. In black and white.
--- Fernando F. Croce |