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Global thing: Fat City (1972)



 
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Videos (1)
created on: 5/05/2017
by: CinemasFringes (219)
Globalises the following things :
S
T
 
 

Movies properties

Displayed (non textual) :
Person : Jeff Bridges
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Person : Stacy Keach
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Person : Susan Tyrell
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Displayed (written) info :
STACY KEACH - JEFF BRIDGES - SUSAN TYRELL

FAT CITY

Directed by JOHN HUSTON
Movie Genre :
Drama
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Color & sound :
Color
Originally released :
1972
Language - Spoken :
English
,
Spanish
Rating :
BBFC (UK) 12 (UK)
MPAA (US) PG – Parental Guidance Suggested
Running time :
97
Movie credits (on artwork) :
A Production From : John Huston
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
A Production From : Ray Stark
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Actor : Jeff Bridges
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Actor : Stacy Keach
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Actor : Susan Tyrell
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Directed By : John Huston
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Novel By (Based On) : Leonard Gardner
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Producer : Ray Stark
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Screenplay By : Leonard Gardner
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
Presented By : Rastar Productions, Inc.
This endpoint is approved in the database from previous submissions.
End credits (not on artwork) :
:
Description (by producer & GT in English only) :
The next to the last stop.
Comments & Reviews :
Posted by CinemasFringes (219) on mei 09, 2017
Based on Leonard Gardner’s novel, Fat City takes a look at the lives of two boxers living and working in Stockton, California. Billy Tully (Stacy Keach) is an ex-professional boxer drowning in alcohol and eking out a living via a succession of odd jobs. One day when he goes to train at the local YMCA he spots the younger Ernie (Jeff Bridges) practising with a boxing ball. When he asks the latter for an informal spar to size up his skills he’s impressed with his ability to land a punch, and advises him to go to and see Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto) and sign up for professional matches while he’s still at his physical peak.

The film follows the pair as Ernie gets his face bloodied in a series of matches and faces commitment dilemmas with his teenage girlfriend Faye (Candy Clark), while Tully meets a fellow alcoholic named Oma (Susan Tyrell) in a bar. When Oma’s boyfriend Earl (Curtis Cokes) winds up in jail after a fight the pair kick off a relationship. As the story progresses, when Tully finds he is struggling to hold down a steady income and handle the volatility of living with a fellow human being nursing her own emotional wounds, he decides to try his hand (or rather fists) at boxing once more.

Fat City was one of John Huston’s cherished personal projects to bring novels to the big screen. It’s close in feel to his later films Wise Blood (1979) and Under the Volcano (1984). His directorial style is resolutely non-flashy, observational and studied as it keeps an almost static camera focus at mid-distance on the actors and their surrounding environments, allowing the rich details in both to speak for themselves. That said it’s still a visually impressive film thanks to the painterly compositions of cinematographer Conrad Hall, and the emphatic noir influences that Huston brings to many of the (mostly on-location) interior shots. Exteriors feature a number of documentary-like vignettes of people who appear to be genuine down-and-outs, fully engendering the film’s focus on those left on the garbage heap by the American Dream.

A feel-good Rocky-style interpretation of boxing this is not. When Tully comments in one scene that he’s close to turning 30, it’s sadly ironic that he looks and talks like someone who’s closer to 50 (incidentally, Stacy Keach actually was turning 30 years old at the time of filming). Tellingly, the boxing scenes themselves aren’t really the central focus of the film. As with everything else here they are filmed in a distant manner as if they are another banality of these bruised lives. Even when a notable victory does occur in the ring for one of the characters it feels hollow in the light of scenes we witness before and after. In a nice piece of visual metaphor, the lights are turned out in the corridor adjoining the ring, and we linger there in the darkness for some time to follow one of the characters as he leaves the building.

While Fat City isn’t as unremittingly bleak as John Huston’s later stench-of-booze classic Under the Volcano, it’s still a sad and, at times, squirm-in-your-seat uncomfortable watch. In particular, a shouty supper scene between Tully and Oma (complete with burnt steaks and uncooked tinned peas) leaves the viewer with a horrible dilemma over whether to laugh at these two hopeless souls or to feel sorry for them. There’s also a blood urination scene that will surely cause most to flinch in horror.

The performances by Stacy Keach and Susan Tyrell as the damaged, eternally-soused couple are devastatingly convincing, and nail the self-pitying hugs-and-yells dynamics of an alcohol-dependant relationship down to a tee. Both could easily have garnered Oscars had their fortunes smiled on them; sadly, while Tyrell was at least nominated, Keach was snubbed. Mind you, 1972 was an exceptional year, with Marlon Brando’s performance in The Godfather being the frontrunner. While each went on to make a few other cult favourites and they both managed to work together again in the little-seen 1976 version of Jim Thompson’s novel Killer Inside Me, neither of them ever quite reached the top league of movie actors.

Here the pair overshadow Jeff Bridges, who at this early career stage was merely a pretty solid, promising young actor rather than the seasoned veteran he turned into. Still, he’s engaging enough playing Ernie that we hope he doesn’t end up landing in the same skid row situation as Tully. His scenes with Candy Clark (in her debut) also have an effortless chemistry and touching sweetness that makes their youthful relationship believable.

Fat City is an atmospheric, pathos-laden paean to society’s losers and damaged.

Rating:

8,50

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Item number : 16095

Submitted by : CinemasFringes (219)
on : 05/05/2017