Exoticalot
People are voting emotionally.
Matialth
Good concept, poorly executed.
Kien Navarro
Exactly the movie you think it is, but not the movie you want it to be.
cgyford
"Look" magazine photographer and chess-player Stanley Kubrick teamed up with old school chum Alexander Singer to launch their filmmaking careers and that of their star with this short but sweet self-financed boxing documentary, based on the future legendary director's 1949 photo feature "Prizefighter", which after the original buyer went belly-up was sold to RKO for a cool $100 profit.We follow the fan (short for fanatic as no-nonsense narrator Douglas Edwards informs us) to the places where matched pairs of men get up on a canvas covered platform and commit legal assault and lawful battery in an attempt to capture the primitive vicarious visceral thrill of seeing one animal overcome another with the science of hammering each other unconscious with upholstered fists.Irish-American middleweight Walter Cartier is selected at random, with a little help from boxing historian Nat Fleischer, from the 6,000 professional prize fighters who more often than not fail to scrape a living in America to give us insight into the people the fan seldom sees and never considers behind the facts and figures and columns of cold statistics in the record books.Walter Cartier makes an amiable enough presence at the centre of the action to be able to go on to a TV acting career as we see his daily routine transform him into arena man, with able support coming from his twin brother and manager Vincent Cartier and opponent Bobby James as well as a brief appearance from Nat Fleischer and the dulcet tones of news reader Douglas Edwards.The filmmakers make a fine pairing as Kubrick ducks and dives with his hand-held camera getting up close and personal with Cartier both before and during the fight while Singer rises above it all with his camera on a tripod to catch an overview of the action which together with the debut score of another childhood friend Gerald Fried all comes together to make a strong first impression."No one ever told Walter to be a fighter..."
harrsh85
i had this movie for many months in my pc, i am die hard fan of stanley kubrick and i am always fascinated by him but something really not interested me to watch this movie mainly because of the bad print i had, recently my pc got overloaded with lot of storage so i was going through files so that i can delete and maintain freespace so in that kind of situation i saw this movie, i was amazed by the way it was made by that time; that too with that kind of budget, since i want to delete i watched it again, now i am in dilemma whether to keep it or delete it because i feel multiple viewings will help me a great deal in my profession bec i too come from same profession, i think you understand how good it is.we can clearly understand that the filmmaker wanted to explore the details about boxing for which he cleverly used point of view method bec only the persons involved immersely in something will know the pros and cons of that thing so it is a clever move to go that way.this is a docu drama but at the same time the central character is the real person as depicted. the detailing and the way they shot was mindblowing but it will be exciting only when you see from that point of time where film-making is a difficult task.the style of this film is very similar to stanley kubrick's another film called the killing which released after this movie like in the voice of the commentator, lighting, camera angles, music, etc.., this is not a positive movie about boxing and at the same time it is not negative too, this is a truthful movie about boxing and boxers.there are chances that this movie can be a great influence with martin scorsese for his film raging bull, even though that is a true story as this is too, film-making might have influenced from this movie but if that is true you must understand what a great thing it is to get influenced for 70's movie from 50's movie; that is stanley kubrick.
Irie212
The Day of the Fight is rarely seen, but essential viewing for anybody who takes cinema, or Kubrick, seriously. It encompasses one day in the life of a boxer in New York City in 1951, and is beautifully filmed (Kubrick at the camera) and structured, with the audience knowing throughout that the day will end in a fight, so there is built-in tension about that upcoming bout, and who will win. The voice-over is tightly written by Kubrick, and his writing is only one of many suggestions of the scope of the filmmaker's gifts. Two examples: A scene where the fighter is at home playing with his dog while the voice-over talks about the brutality the man employs in the ring-- terrific contrast in moods. And the audio is perfect: the only time Kubrick films with sound is when the boxer enters the ring-- then you hear crowd sounds, announcers, everything. Until then, it's a documentary with voice-over. It really is a minor work of an important genius.
Geofbob
Unlike the earlier Day of the Fight in which one can see inklings of Stanley Kubrick's later achievements, this film is a minor piece of hackwork with little to be said in its favour. Indeed, the most telling feature is that Kubrick, who would later be known as an obsessive perfectionist, here displays indifference. Almost all documentaries are set up to some extent, but here it would have been clear to the slowest of the audience that the episode of the padre flying a mother and sick baby to a hospital was acted out specially for the film. The clumsiness is compounded by the narration, which goes out its way to inform us that the episode was spontaneous and shot as it happened. With a little more inventiveness, Kubrick could have made the sequence at least partially convincing. (This assumes that Kubrick was responsible for the commentary; perhaps he wasn't, and this was an early lesson for him on what producers can do if you don't insist on full control!)
