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 final sequence (the Walter Cartier vs. Bobby James bout) was filmed live on 17 April 17 1950 by Stanley Kubrick and Alexander Singer.

Quotes:

Narrator: Walter isn't concerned with the hands of the clock now, just his own hands. As he gets ready to walk out there in the arena in front of the people, Walter is slowly becoming another man. This is the man who cannot lose, who must not lose. The hard movements of his arms and fists are different from what they were an hour ago. They belong to a fierce new person. They're part of the arena man, the fighting machine that the crowd outside has paid to see in fifteen minutes.

Movie Connections:

Referenced in Killer's Kiss (1955)

Early portents of Kubrick's later trademarks

Stanley Kubrick was never one for realistic films about ordinary people; the nearest he came to a straightforward drama was probably the heist movie, The Killing. This shying away from realism seems to show itself in his very first film, this short documentary about the boxer, Walter Cartier, preparing for and engaging in a fight. Any boxer is a special person, but some directors might have portrayed Cartier as a regular guy with a particular skill; but from the start Kubrick stresses Cartier's unusualness by showing waking up beside, and going around town with, his identical twin brother, giving a surreal aspect to the film.

The way Cartier psychs himself up for the fight in his dressing room, turning himself into a fighting machine, also seems to fit in with Kubrick's later interest in making films about people under stress (eg Full Metal Jacket) or in an abnormal state (eg The Shining and Clockwork Orange). It is also intriguing to wonder whether the director's fondness for voiceover narrative in his feature films stems from this and his other early documentaries. Oh, by the way, it's quite a good documentary about a fighter who, in fact, never became champ, and went into TV and films.