IMDb > The Set-Up (1949)

The Set-Up (1949) More at IMDbPro »

Overview

User Rating:
7.9/10   2,844 votes
MOVIEmeter: ?
Up 24% in popularity this week. See why on IMDbPro.
Director:
Robert Wise
Writers:
Art Cohn (screenplay)
Joseph Moncure March (poem)
Contact:
View company contact information for The Set-Up on IMDbPro.
Release Date:
10 January 1950 (Portugal) more
Genre:
Film-Noir | Sport more
Tagline:
I Want a Man... Not a Human Punching Bag! more
Plot:
Against all odds, a worn down fading boxer, painstakingly clashes against his driven opponent, firmly refusing to accept the hearsay of a washed up career. full summary | add synopsis
Plot Keywords:
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Awards:
Nominated for BAFTA Film Award. Another 2 wins more
NewsDesk:
(2 articles)
Jean-Jacques Beineix: The Hollywood Interview
 (From The Hollywood Interview. 14 July 2009, 4:20 PM, PDT)
Director Robert Wise Dies at 91
 (From IMDb News. 15 September 2005)
User Comments:
Knockout more (48 total)

Cast

  (Complete credited cast)

Robert Ryan ... Stoker
Audrey Totter ... Julie
George Tobias ... Tiny
Alan Baxter ... Little Boy
Wallace Ford ... Gus
Percy Helton ... Red
Hal Baylor ... Tiger Nelson (as Hal Fieberling)
Darryl Hickman ... Shanley
Kenny O'Morrison ... Moore
James Edwards ... Luther Hawkins

David Clarke ... Gunboat Johnson
Phillip Pine ... Souza
Edwin Max ... Danny
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Additional Details

Parents Guide:
Add content advisory for parents
Runtime:
72 min
Country:
USA
Language:
English
Color:
Black and White
Aspect Ratio:
1.37 : 1 more
Sound Mix:
Mono (RCA Sound System)
Certification:
Canada:18A | USA:Approved (certificate #13478) | Argentina:13 | Australia:PG | Finland:K-12 | Norway:16 | Sweden:15 | UK:A (original rating) (cut) | UK:PG (video rating) (1987)
Company:
RKO Radio Pictures more

Fun Stuff

Trivia:
Based upon a narrative poem published in 1928 by Joseph Moncure March, who gave up his job as the first managing editor of "The New Yorker" to devote himself to writing. On the strength of it, he went to Hollywood as a screenwriter, remaining there for a dozen years. In 1948 he volunteered to work on this film, but was turned down. He was incensed that his black boxer Pansy Jones was changed into the white Stoker Thompson. more
Goofs:
Continuity: When Julie Thompson takes her walk from the gymnasium, she watches Pacific Electric interurban cars as they enter a subway tunnel. Car No. 707 is shown passing twice in a row. more
Quotes:
Red: I tell you, Tiny, you gotta let him in on it.
Tiny: How many times I gotta say it? There's no percentage in smartenin' up a chump.
more
Movie Connections:
Referenced in Fighters (1991) (TV) more

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User Comments

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39 out of 51 people found the following comment useful.
Knockout, 10 August 2002
10/10
Author: telegonus from brighton, ma

This is an awfully hard and brutal movie, produced at the end of the brief but fascinating Dore Schary regime at RKO (1946-48), just prior to Howard Hughes' purchase of the studio, which led to the company's slow, agonizing decline that forced it, or rather its new owners, to close it down ten years later. It's the story of an aging boxer, over the hill but still harboring a measure of optimism, really a sort of pride. In this tragic role Robert Ryan is superb. Tough, compassionate, deeply ethical, realistic, and yet with just enough of the dreamer in him to keep him emotionally afloat, Stoker Thompson represents the best qualities of the so-called common man. In an earlier, more heroic age, he might have been a knight; but alas we do not live in such a time, thus his personal qualities go unnoticed by all but his wife. In this role, Audrey Totter is almost as good as Ryan. Some of her scenes are unforgettable, as when she tears up the ticket to her husband's fight and throws it over the bridge into the steam of an oncoming train; or when she watches a bunch of silly teenagers "play" at boxing with a couple of performing puppets, which at first amuses her, then horrify her when she realizes her own and her husband's fate in this little "play" scene.

The film is a masterpiece of design and composition. Director Robert Wise never made a better picture than this. The movie, like High Noon, plays out in real time, and as a result has an air of urgency to it. Adapted from a poem by Joseph Moncure March, which tells essentially the same story, but with the main character a black man, Wise and scenarist Art Cohn take considerable liberties here that purists' might not care for. In the poem the setting is New York, while in the movie it's a tank town called Paradise City, a far cry from New York even if it's in fact less than a hundred miles away, upstate, or in New Jersey or Pennsylvania. The film never makes this clear. Here and there hints are dropped that the setting might be California. It doesn't matter. The Paradise City boxing arena is a place for young guys on their way up and old guys on their way down. It's a million miles from Madison Square Garden, and that's all that counts.

The film's settings are beautifully realized; and Milton Krasner's photography is no less brilliant. The central street, all blinking lights, and yet shadowy and black in odd places, is a perfect visual metaphor for the action of the film; while seldom have the denizens of a small city looked more menacing. Men in garish ties and fedoras jostle each other on the sidewalk as they pass by. They are a hard, apathetic breed, and hungry for sensation. Inside the arena we see humanity at its least admirable, as there is an undercurrent of sadism in even the most innocuous-seeming fight fans, such as a blind man ("go for his eyes!). We sense that these people come not so much to see a favorite boxer win as a hapless boxer lose.

In the center of all this is Stoker, a man with character surrounded by people who could care less. As his handlers, a porcine, toothpick-chewing Percy Helton, and a thick-witted George Tobias, are superb. In a somewhat smaller role, Edwin Max, in pinstripe suit, with pencil-line mustache's, and what look like three soggy Salada tea bags under each eye, is visually perfect as a small-time something, not even hood, just a guy who runs around and does things for the big guy, played by Alan Baxter, a sort of anti-Stoker, a man without qualities who goes to great lengths to show that he has class and principles, when in fact he has neither. The man is a monster, and he doesn't even have guts. When Stoker punches him in the face he lets his goons do the dirty work.

The interior lives of the two main characters in this film suggest an affinity with the humanistic stoicism Hemingway, while the surface is closer to Weegee and Walker Evans. Overall, though, the movie is pure RKO; its courage-in-the-face-of-adversity theme suggests, almost uncannily, this odd man out among the major studios' history and future, and the best qualities of those who worked there.

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