Matt's Big Oscar Challenge Day Twenty-Seven: Boxing Clever

Next up we have The Champ a film that I didn't really know what to expect from. I had obviously heard of the Jon Voight and Faye Dunaway picture from the 1970s but was unaware that that was actually a remake of this film that was nominated for Best Picture at the 1932 ceremony but lost to Grand Hotel. It did however win a Best Screenplay Award and a Best Actor award for Wallace Beery for playing the titular Champ. The film itself concerns the life of Beery's Andy Purcell nicknamed Champ as he was the former world heavyweight boxing champion. But Champ has fallen on bad times and trains for undercard matches so he can afford to look after his son Dink. But Champ is both an alcoholic and a gambler and therefore doesn't usually turn up in any fit state for his fight and it is often Dink who has to look after his father and not the other way around. Dink and Champ re-encounter Dink's mother Linda who has remarried to a wealthy gentleman who bribes Champ into letting Linda see Dink as the film goes on Dink is forced to stay with Linda when Champ is arrested but is then bailed out by Linda's husband. The finale of the film sees Champ and Dink reunited and Champ boxing the Mexican champion in a main event fight. In the end of the film Champ wins but later dies of a heart attack and in a heartbreaking scene he has a final heart to heart with Dink who then is comforted by his mother.

The Champ is part sports movie but mostly a film about the relationship between a father and son. Champ and Dink's relationship is more friends than father and son and Champ never once acts like a proper father towards Dink but you can't tell that he loves him more than anyone else does. There is a transpostition between the seedy underworld that Champ and Dink are forced to live in and Linda' s new life of oppulence. The final boxing match is also quite effective and is given ten minutes to develop while I'm sure that the fight scene in the remake is more technically sound the original has a fight scene to rival Raging Bull or Rocky. The two main performances are also brilliant Beery it seeems had to share his Best Actor Oscar but this performance was incredibly well thought out and multi-layered while, as Dink, Jackie Cooper shows that he is a brilliant child actor. While I wanted to slap him when I saw him in Skippy, here Cooper gives a turn better than a lot of the more mature actors and if the Best Supporting Actor Oscar had been available this year I reckon Cooper would've been nominated also. A brilliant film about the relationships that define us and how easy it is to lose them.