Champion

Young man from the wrong side of the tracks discovers boxing, falls prey to the betting rackets, and then falls from grace. It’s a storyline that practically inspired a whole noir subgenre, but some would say the only examples that achieved greatness featured a superstar male lead: John Garfield in Body and Soul (1947), Robert Ryan in The Set-Up (1949), and Kirk Douglas in this one. Mark Robson’s Champion stars Douglas as Midge Kelly, a young ruffian and drifter who, desperate for work, joins up with trainer Tommy Haley (Paul Stewart) to compete in the ring, where he soon proves himself a disciplined fighter with champion potential. Accompanied and supported unconditionally by his disabled brother Connie (Arthur Kennedy), Midge knockouts his way to the top of the field and is dubbed “the most popular champion in the world,” but this is noir, so, of course, he’s in for a hard landing. The uber-talented Douglas plays Midge in a way that earns our sympathy despite the fact that he’s a cad toward the opposite sex: his spurned women include Emma (Ruth Roman), whom he marries in a shotgun (actually, handgun) wedding and immediately abandons; Palmer Harris (Lola Albright), the sculptor wife of his wealthy, criminal-tied manager whom Midge dumps for a payoff; and Grace Diamond (Marilyn Maxwell), the social-climbing hanger-on blonde whose interest in Midge rises and falls with his stats. Relatively light on the crime element, Robson’s film still delivers generous helpings of violence, betrayal, and debasement, and, with Planer behind the camera, some absolutely stunning visuals: for example, the smoke-billowing train in the first scene, the moonlit beach where Midge and Emma swoon, and, most dramatically, the concrete tunnels leading from Midge’s locker room to the ring, where the dramatic lighting somehow merges heaven and hell.