The Harder They Fall

Boxing has been a frequent film topic over the entire history of film, probably for two reasons. It's an easy sport to depict, budget-wise, than team sports, because it's only two men (or women) in shorts, shoes, and gloves, and a boxing ring is a simple set. Not a lot of extras are needed. Secondly, it's elemental--one person trying to knock out another person, and directors and editors can and have gone crazy shooting fight scenes, using every crayon in the box. Director Mark Robson does that here, though does exercise some restraint.

But also boxing, throughout its history, has been a sordid sport, full of ne'er-do-wells. The Harder They Fall was based on a book by Budd Schulberg, who wrote On The Waterfront, and this film has the same kind of feel, as if we were lifting the rock and watching the creepy-crawlies underneath.

The film is notable for being the last role for Humphrey Bogart. He was being treated for esophageal cancer at the time and he does not look healthy. He plays a once celebrated sports columnist who is down on his luck, and is hired as a press agent by Rod Steiger , who owns fighters, to promote his latest discovery, a gargantuan boxer from Argentina, called Toro Moreno (Michael V. Lane). Problem: though the guy is huge and muscular, he can't fight.

We learn that is not a problem for Steiger, as he hires fighters to take dives to make Lane look good. Lane, who is a gentle, innocent giant, doesn't know this, and begins to believe his own press clippings. Bogart, who is a decent man who tries to do what's right for Lane, starts to question his own soul, as he needs the money but has to do some dirty things to get it.

The Harder They Fall is unsavory but gripping--we just wait for Bogart to do the right thing. I understand that boxing is or was crooked, but this is a real crawl through the slime. Steiger plays a guy who would cheat his own mother for a buck, and he's surrounded by a menagerie of stooges, particularly Nehemiah Persoff as his accountant and yes-man. One of the things I question about the movie is how powerful Steiger is. When a fighter refuses to take a dive, he is murdered, but Bogart seems to have no worries in that area when he defies Steiger.

For 1956, this is a pretty brutal indictment of a sport that was very popular then, one of the early staples of early TV. One of the endings has Bogart calling for a ban on boxing, but the ending I saw has him calling for a congressional investigation. Today, perhaps because of the brutal nature of the sport and its attraction for miscreants, boxing is a minor sport. I can't even name the heavyweight champion, which back then everybody knew.