Tuesday, March 14, 2023

WINNER TAKE ALL (Roy Del Ruth, 1932)

 

Jimmy Kane is no upstanding citizen, a punch-drunk pugilist who becomes more concerned with his looks than titles. Jimmy Cagney as the lightweight boxer punches like he talks, hard but with aplomb. Cagney does all of his own stunts as the boxing matches are filmed in long to medium shot without slow-motion or close-ups, so he jabs and punches and gets rocked in real-time! Though the punches are pulled, and the matches sometimes seem more vaudeville than violent it’s still should earn our cinematic respect. Guy Kibbee as Pop Slavin, Jimmy’s manager, knocks him flat with common sense and a firm right hook. Kane’s trainer is Rosebud who is portrayed gracefully by the great Clarence Muse in a rather significant supporting role. 

Jimmy is a successful boxer who needs a Depression era GoFundMe donation for a vacation from NYC to a desert Rest Home, 3,000 miles away from broads and booze. Of course, he finds infatuation instead of rehabilitation and falls for Peggy, a widowed woman with a charming child (Marion Nixon and Dickie Moore, respectively). Jimmy drops his guard until he is summoned back to Madison Square Garden and takes a fall for Park Avenue. He is soon the brutish boy-toy for socialite Joan Gibson (the alluring Virginia Bruce) and forgets about his promises to Peggy and son: he’s without a doubt a douchebag yet Cagney still wrings some empathy from his physically and emotionally deformed character. After plastic surgery to (mistakenly) appease Joan, he dances ring-around-the-rosy in the square circle afraid of a broken nose and cauliflower ear. But her attraction is to the tough-guy visage, so she turns ice-cold. Jimmy is too ignorant to be embarrassed by her high-society friends until he delivers his own chilly rebuttal by cold-cocking her paramour. Though Jimmy ends up with Peggy it’s on the rebound and feels disingenuous. Peggy is between her rock and a hard place so what other option does she have but to accept the illusion of love: who knows, maybe the champ will rise above being a chump. 

Final Grade: (B-)