Project Old Hollywood: The Harder They Fall

I am light years behind on my classic movie viewing and reviewing due to laziness and having found an unpaid position of literary research and archiving for a writer. I am under a confidentiality agreement not to reveal anything but suffice it to say the English nerd in me is busy drooling over Important Writers. As a side note, one of the volunteers looks uncannily like my mother even though we're the same age -I mean ridiculously so, from physical appearance to the way she sits, walks, her mannerisms, her general aura. It's really psyching me out. But I digress.

I must have seen The Harder They Fall practically three weeks ago so it's not fresh in my mind anymore but I'll do my best. This was my first Humphrey Bogart film and his last before he died. I don't know whether to call that ironic or not but it's a neat parallel no?

Summary: The basic story of this film noir revolves around corruption in boxing. Bogart plays a sports journalist who tries to revive his career by working with a bunch of crooks to promote a new boxer from Argentina called Toro Moreno, whose enormous physical size is completely offset by his utter lack of skill. Shady fights, manly angst and moral dilemmaz ensue. When recounting my experience of this film I seem to naturally gravitate towards my gripes -not to say that I didn't like it, but it wasn't mind-blowing or anything.

Gripe #1: Poor acting and awkward scripting

This mostly applies to Mike Lane, who plays Toro. As far as I can tell, he was cast purely for his appearance and size, so I guess you can't blame the poor guy for delivering his lines like Tommy Wiseau. My friend defended his wooden portrayal on the grounds that that was how his character was meant to be -thick and bovine. Toro. Get it? But to borrow some wisdom from Tropic Thunder, you don't go "full retarded." And like Mark Waters noted about it taking a nice girl to play a mean one, it takes someone intelligent to play someone dumb. That's why it's called acting.

Gripe #2: Bogart and Sterling

I get that in this "manly" film it would be foolish of me to expect a strong female role, but my main problem with Jan Sterling's character Beth Willis, even as an undeveloped side-dish, is the utter lack of chemistry between her and Bogart's Eddie Willis. They are completely unconvincing as a couple, let alone supposedly loving husband and wife, which makes all the drama surrounding their relationship hard to get into. I'll give her credit for sassing out the head crook Nick Benko (played by Rod Steiger) in one scene though. Which leads to the one thing I consistently enjoyed:

Rod Steiger

Okay, so he may have had it easy playing Asshole-In-Charge Nick Benko, but he got some darn good ranty and oh-snap lines and delivered them at lightning screwball-comedy speed, and was in general a fabulous Angry and Stressed Man archetype that kept me entertained. Besides him, the one other thing you should watch this film for is the Toro Bus which I can't find a picture of but just know that it's amazingly camp.

Coming next: Bonnie and Clyde