Dink is more adult than his paterfamilias, a father who is a washed up ex-heavyweight boxing champ and husband, a man who counts his years in gambling losses and empty bottles of hooch. King Vidor’s superb direction allows the two leads Wallace Beery (The titular Champ) and the precocious Jackie Cooper (his boy Dink) to act in long takes as the camera often moves and tracks with the characters either as they jog along a road or wash their faces before a mirror. This allows the actors to imbue their characters with little quirks and idiosyncrasies such as Champ’s pugnacious morning rituals or Dink’s subtle gestures and body language indicating anxiety, depression or joy. This is important because children may not be able to put words to their feelings, but they sure can express them! The Academy Award winning screenplay by Frances Marion deserves its accolades and slants towards a feminist empowerment: here, Champ’s ex-wife and her new husband are not portrayed as vindictive or antagonists even though their desires stage the narrative friction. Even Champ has moments of adult understanding and has a rather healthy outlook concerning his own failures and his son’s best interests. Dink’s pal Jonah is a black boy whose race is only mentioned in one brief child-like moment of dialogue, otherwise, he’s an active friend of Dink’s and gets more screen time than any of the other gang. It’s so refreshing to see a black character that is depicted without stereotype or condescension in Pre-Code films!
The wonderful camerawork is surprisingly lensed by Gordon Avil, a journeyman cinematographer who would later photograph the awful yet endearing ROBOT MONSTER! Check out his work on Howard Koch’s BIG HOUSE U.S.A. as his use of claustrophobic low-key lighting is grand. The final scenes of the Champ duking it out in the square circle with the current heavyweight champion are brutally filmed in medium shot, witnessing every roundhouse punch and blood-spattered blow. The editing cuts to low-angle close-up only a few times and remains composed as if we are in the arena watching the fight in real time. Wallace Beery has perfected the self-deprecating man-child role which pendulums from embarrassment to violence without warning. But his on-screen chemistry with the young Jackie Coogan is amazing as this illusion of deep love and devotion is as volatile off-screen as camphor and nitrocellulose. Beery would share the Academy Award and he’s wonderful (maybe not Frederic March wonderful, mind you) but for my money it’s Cooper’s emotional equation of intelligence, compassion, child-like surprise (not childish) and tear-jerking trauma that make the film so powerful.
The story of a morally flawed father whose love for his son is transcendent may be rather trite and saccharine today but this taughtly written and directed film is the real deal: if modern films are artificial sweeteners than this one is pure Cane sugar.
Final Grade: (B+)