Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962)

I saw the original Requiem for a Heavyweight starring Jack Palance in 1956, and I absolutely loved it. Jack was fantastic; I couldn't imagine anyone else doing a better job in the role. Now that I've seen both versions, the Playhouse 90 and Hollywood versions, I still can't pick a favorite. To me, Jack Palance and Anthony Quinn give excellent and different performances that can't be compared against each other. Jack is sweet; Tony is rugged. Jack is clueless; Tony is brain-damaged. Rod Serling's story is very heavy, but the 1962 version is a little heavier, so my advice is to start with whichever level of drama you're in the mood for.In the story, Anthony Quinn gets one too many hits to the head and is forced to give up the only job he's ever had. His manager Jackie Gleason isn't happy about it because he's racked up an enormous amount of gambling debts. While he tries to talk Tony into humiliating himself by entering the world of wrestling so he can make more money, Mickey Rooney tries to look out for Tony's best interests. Mickey is the trainer, and he knows firsthand what it's like to be at the top of the world and suddenly have your career taken away. Both Jackie and Mickey are very good in these dark, emotional roles, but they're no comparison to Tony's performance. His raw, heartbreaking performance falls under the category of "What does it take?", as he wasn't even nominated for an Oscar. I've seen more than forty of his films, and this is probably the best performance he's ever given. If you liked Somebody Up There Likes Me, this movie might become your new favorite. I don't know how he balances the fine line of having brain damage and trying to hold onto the wits he has left, but it's scarily accurate. In one moment, he's able to carry on a conversation with Julie Harris, and in the next, he lapses into a flashback in the ring. He's brought out of his episode, and while part of him doesn't really know what he's done wrong, another part of him is terribly sorry and doesn't know how to make it right. If you're like me and you get affected by powerful performances, get out your Kleenexes.

With an excellent script by Rod Serling and supporting roles by solid, veteran actors, this film never misses a beat. Both Mickey Rooney and Jackie Gleason turn in great performances in support of Anthony Quinn, who apparently fit this movie in while "Lawrence of Arabia" was on hiatus. I've seen just about everything that Quinn has done (including his also excellent stint in 1943's "The Oxbow Incident") and none of it, IMO, compares with his performance in "Requiem." The pure pathos of his character's desperate desire for that one last bout to show he still has it is just heart-wrenching. Again, Quinn's scenes with Julie Harris are equally touching, a perfect counter to the boxing tale. While Quinn is best known for blockbusters like "Lawrence" and "Zorba," I felt that for this role he went down deep to find his Mountain Rivera and gave it everything he had. Boxing films are never easy to watch, with all the brutality and bloodletting that ensues. But know this film is about much, much more, and it deserves your attention whether you are a fight fan or not.

Which is your favourite Anthony Quinn film? (100 today) My candidate would be this one, a thorough debunking of the whole boxing business, with noteworthy appearances of the young Cassius Clay, Mickey Rooney and Jackie Gleason as his managers, one human and the other one seemingly corrupt but in fact the only realist, and Julie Harris as his one female friend, while Anthony Quinn as the wreck of a finished and humiliated boxer is one of the strongest characterizations ever made on film in almost unbearably straightforward realism. Note in the beginning and opening scene, that you never see his face until he himself sees it in the mirror. Add to this a fantastic music score by Laurence Rosenthal. The Swedish boxing champion at the time Ingo Johansson wanted every Swede to see this film, but this is not only for boxers. It's a universal study in humiliation, and no one is spared, humiliation is a fact of life, and there is nothing more difficult to handle. The film mercilessly displays all the ingredients, like shame, guilt, treason, failure, hypocrisy and defeat, and the chalice is emptied to the last drop. Still, in all his humiliation, ruin and disgrace, Anthony Quinn's failure of a boxing character in the end still stands on the floor as some kind of a victor by accepting his self-humiliation. It's a grotesque tragedy but an impressing abyssal dive and fall into fathomless humanity with infinite richness in spite of its extreme confinement in the small ugly corrupt world of the gladiator sport of boxing.

There is not one scene or one piece of dialog or one piece of this production that is nothing less than masterful. A perfect picture that demonstrates the ability and talent of all involved. The cinematography and set design are a norish display of a devilishness that pervades the urban decay and the decline of the species from ape to man to ape-man.All the performances are elegant and the musical score is biting with jazzy tones befitting the multi-cultural sport and the mayhem of the monsters and mobsters who inhabit this asphalt and canvas jungle. It is a riveting recital of the human condition that is part evolution and part separation from the Divine. Dignity and self respect, greed and vice, love and loathing, friendship and betrayal, hope and hopelessness. are all here and much more to contemplate. All from a low budget and high nobility.A survival of the fittest morality tale. Quite quintessentially Rod Serling.