PG | 1 h 53 min | Drama | 1956
Boxing fans fancying generous close-ups or tantalizing slow-motion shots of fighters may be disappointed with Robert Wise’s film. Based on real-life boxer, Rocky Graziano and his eponymous biography, this fictionalized adaptation is more about his fights outside the middleweight ring: his rise from poverty and hooliganism, and how his caring family tames his self-destructive side.
Hardened by his father, ex-boxer Nick Barbella’s (Harold J. Stone) misguided attempts to toughen his son by getting him to don boxing-gloves as a child, young Rocky Graziano/Barbella (Paul Newman) rebels. As he grows into adolescence, he throws himself into downtown Brooklyn’s gangsterism. Frustrated, the state throws everything else at him: juvie, jail, even the U.S. Army. Nothing works.
Rocky’s mother, Ma Barbella (Eileen Heckart), admitted into the county hospital, is sleepless, losing her mind worrying about him and his future. She threatens to disavow him if he returns to his gangster friends. He flees the army’s discipline, but they arrest and dishonorably discharge her son, then imprison him as a deserter. Out of prison and anxious not to aggravate Ma, he’s desperate to support her and find his feet. So, he cleans up his act, becomes a boxer, reluctantly, and only for the money. He marries Norma (Pier Angeli) and has a baby girl.
Norma abhors violence but makes peace with his boxing, the only livelihood he knows. Besides, he now recognizes his responsibilities as husband and father. With manager Irving Cohen’s (Everett Sloane) help inside the ring and Norma’s and Ma’s outside it, the once selfish, insecure adolescent becomes a man who wins regard and respect for his skill and resilience.
Then, with the ferocity of an uppercut, Rocky’s past catches up with him. Former gang-buddy Frankie Peppo (Robert Loggia) blackmails him: take dirty money and throw (intentionally lose) a fight so the betting mafia can win big on a rival boxer or risk making public his shame as a deserter-convict. On the ropes, as it were, Rocky fears slipping back into crime and losing his only shot at love and happiness.
Like his protagonist, Wise isn’t fascinated by fights. He barely films the ring. Instead, he depicts most matches through montages, newspaper clippings, or radio broadcasts. Even for scenes involving the ring, Wise dwells on banter in the sidelines that makes surprise winners out of losers, and losers out of sure winners.
Brooklyn’s Barbella
Despite his self-destructive run, Rocky’s humility and self-awareness keeps him from sliding further. A prison mate asks him what he’s in for. Owning his decisions and offering no excuses, Rocky admits, “For being a jerk!”His reputation for speaking with his fists gets him into “solitary.” It also impresses the prison’s boxing squad chief. Rocky resists every enticement to box, “I ain’t interested. … All my life I’ve been fighting … and gettin’ in trouble … I don’t wanna fight, with gloves, without gloves.”
Later, after he establishes himself in the ring and is barred for breaking regulations (withholding Peppo’s name from investigators examining match-fixing), Rocky groans with self-pity and wounded pride. Tempted to slide back into gangsterism, Rocky’s thoughts about himself pour out in words, as he counsels still-hustling, teenage gang-buddy Romolo (Sal Mineo), “It ain’t worth it.” He warns Romolo that he’ll get killed if he doesn’t wise up and reform.
That lonely stroll back home, through night streets he used to roam as a hustler, helps Rocky see starkly what he’s got and what he just might be throwing away. He sees boys and men, like him, caught in a circle of self-deception that only they can break. If only they had families to back them.
In a powerful scene, Norma confronts Rocky. His shameful past is his. He can’t sulk whenever the envious remind him of it. She can’t keep pacifying him whenever he’s in trouble. He’s the one who broke regulations, not the boxing commission, not the D.A. He’s no “innocent bystander.”
Shocked, Irving begs her to back Rocky unquestioningly. She snaps, “I’m his wife, not his manager!” Irving cares only about Rocky’s fighting days, but she cares, and will care, even when he’s through fighting, long after Irving has stopped worrying about his weight and his footwork.
Wise’s someone “up there” is really “down here.” It’s Rocky’s family. At one point, in and out of reform-school, Rocky pleads with his Ma, “Why don’t you give up on me!?”
Like everyone who deeply loves, she cries, “I don’t know how!”
