THE INDISPENSIBLES – #0: THE SET-UP
At the suggestion of my dear friend Jimm, here’s a #0 listing because, as he so passionately explained, “no list ever counts down to zero! Yours should be the first!” Secretly I think no list does because, well, its kinda nonsensical, but this is only a bit of “fun” after all so… why not? I’ll do it and that will be his chrimbo present! Money saved on a budget of no money? TA-DA! Anyhoo…
It’s kind of apt that Robert Wise’s The Set-Up takes up this weird little position “zero” because, in all honesty, it is an absolute must see of a film but one that bounces with a great deal of regularity around my Top 100. On some days it’s in the Top 50, other days I hold it in higher regard then even… yes… Midnight Run. I can’t really explain it to be honest. I just know that it is a very big favourite of mine that floats throughout my affections but is far too superb to ever leave them entirely!
The Set-Up is Robert Wise’s best film, in my opinion. And when you consider that his directorial CV is made up of flicks like (for me, recently purchased, watched and loved) The Day The Earth Stood Still, Somebody Up There Likes Me, Run Silent Run Reepd, West Side Story, The Haunting, The Sound of Music, The Andromeda Strain and Star Trek: The Motion Picture (unseen by me, but cherished by many, I am aware!), this is no small compliment I assure you.
I spent my youth, and a bit of my early twenties, on the boxing circuit – mainly fighting for the military and during my police service. Rocky was most definitely the film that inspired the young weedy fourteen year old to first strap on the gloves. The Set-Up was the movie that initially made me take them off nearly ten years later.
It is one of the most realistic movies about the sport that you could ask for. It doesn’t go out of its way to just capture the physicality of boxing. It makes sure that it captures the mind-set of it too. And that is where the film excels. It captures the back-room nerves, hopes, fears, aspirations of guys waiting to go out in front of a crowd and willingly get punched about the head repeatedly, with unarguable pitch-perfection. It also conveys the upfront corruption and degrading semi-politics of the sport, and just what it means to stand alone when your all important corner team work against you. I’ve been there, I’ve seen these sort of things first hand – honestly! A boxer watching The Set-Up is a like a police officer or ex police officer, anywhere in the world, watching HBO’s The Wire. The documentary level recognition of reality in a fictional form is outstanding!
Robert Wise’s masterpiece follows over-the-hill boxer Bill ‘Stoker’ Thompson (Robert Ryan), a thirty-five year old semi-has-been who is going up against young twenty-something contenders just to keep money in the bank, but killing his body in the process. He insists he can still win, even though victory is something he has long forgotten the taste of and though his wife Julie (Audrey Totter) pleads with him to quit. But his manager Tiny (George Tobias) is so confident he will lose once again in his impending bout with Tiger Nelson (Hal Baylor), he takes money for a “dive” from tough gambler Little Boy (Alan Baxter) - and doesn’t even bother to tell Stoker. The tension builds, unbearably, as Stoker starts priming himself to “take” Nelson in the fight of his life in order to prove something to himself once and for all, completely unaware of what will happen to him if he does.
The masterstroke of The Set-Up is that it is shot in real-time. The film plays out to nearly eighty minutes in the life of Ryan’s Stoker. We follow him from his hotel room dispute with his wife, into the changing room, his interaction with fellow fighters who come and go with the dreams achieved or shattered come their respective fights end, his own fight with Tiger Nelson (shot round for round in real time too!) and the aftermath that comes from the subsequent result. The real-time set up (pardon the pun) is brilliantly executed and, as a result, adds to the film’s unbearable sense of tension.
Wise’s choreography in the boxing sequences is also highly commendable. It’s impact back in 1949 resonates to this day. Not only is there very much elements of it seen in Rocky, but more importantly, Martin Scorsese saw the film as a major influence on Raging Bull. So much so that he provides a partial audio-commentary on the film’s DVD with Wise himself who, it should be noted, has made – with this movie and the Paul Newman classic Somebody Up There Likes Me – two of the most definitive movies about the sport of boxing that you will find in the history of cinema.
The Set-Up is a genuine classic in every sense of the word. It is, for me, the best film of the 40s and most definitely one of the best sports movies ever made. Ryan’s performance is first rate, both in the naturalism he exudes in the changing room sequences, the physicality he expresses in the all important boxing set-piece and the fear that seeps out of him in the final moments of the film that eventually give way to a sort of damaged, exhausted pride.
The black and white of the film actually push the film, like Scorsese’s Raging Bull, into a thing of twisted beauty. The use of shadow in the film’s climactic scenes are wondrous and the way it captures the city as a whole in all its down-trodden and beaten ‘glory’ is something that still stands up magnificently to this day.
The Set-Up is a masterful piece of work, hugely influential on cinema as a whole and not just the sports movie subgenre. It’s the work of a director who would go on to make unarguably superb movies throughout his career, but who really made his masterpiece very early on. This is the very definition of ‘indispensible’.
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