VEILED THREATS by Phil Mershon
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REQUIEM FOR A HEAVYWEIGHT
Directed by Ralph Nelson
Written by Rod Serling
Starring Anthony Quinn, Jackie Gleason, Mickey Rooney
​Released in 1962
Picture
You think your job at the Burger King, General Landscaping Office, Roto-Rooter, or Congressional Page Headquarters is rough? Unless you are bent over the lap of a contemporary Denny Hastert, you don't go home wearing your own bloodstains each shift. So be glad you are not a prize fighter named Mountain Rivera (Anthony Quinn) taking hard punches to the eye every night for seventeen years. Be grateful you don't have a desperate manager named Maish (Jackie Gleason) who pits you against a young Cassius Clay, or a kind-hearted trainer named Army (Mickey Rooney) who lacks both the power and intellect to persuade you that you need to retire while you can still see out of at least one eye. You could always get a job as an usher if they have any size forty-six uniforms, or else you could go down to the unemployment office and hang out with Julie Harris, talking about what a big deal you used to be. "I'm a big ugly slob and I look like a freak. But I was almost the heavyweight champion of the world." Hey, I just hope the last time you had your life turned inside out, it wasn't for purposes of other people's entertainment.
   Most of us will never know how any of this actually feels. The closest we can come is in Requiem for a Heavyweight (1962). 
   Rod Serling wrote the original script for the television series "Playhouse 90" (and not "Twilight Zone," although the recognition helped Serling's early career). Ralph Nelson directed and allowed Gleason, Rooney and Quinn to grind every raw and fractured emotion they ever possessed, perfectly blurring the distinction between traditional and method acting. The acting is so good and the writing so tight that the film works on the famous "two-levels of great movies." You know about the two levels, don't you? Oh, well, the two levels are: Level One: The movie is about what it appears to be about. Level Two: The movie is about something much bigger than what it appears to be about.
   Level Two of this movie is both subtle and immediate. Of what are our relationships made? Who can we really trust? And is there something inherently fishy about the social constructions that would allow for so much humiliation within the human condition? The heavyweight referenced in the title has less to do with boxing and everything to do with the screwing life often bestows on us.
   The movie is also about how drunkenly wonderful it is to have a real friend in your corner, someone who believes in you when there is no legitimate reason for them to do so, someone who trusts you despite not understanding half of what you talk about, someone who likes you for no good reason whatsoever other than that you seem to need someone to do so, someone who cares about you because they misconstrue your ignorance for charm.
   When Mountain Rivera walks into a bar, the younger fighters listen to his stories, but the joke is on Mountain because the others  unintentionally patronize his innocent vulgarity. His manager sniffs everywhere for some angle with which to shove Mountain further into destruction. And he's already so lowdown that he considers taking a job as an Indian Wrestler, where he wins one night and loses the next. 
   Even if this isn't the kind of deeper meaning that fills your particular cup, the movie screams out to you because of the street-level realism of Jackie Gleason. So strong is his performance that you may wonder why the hell he wasn't in more movies. Sure, he was inThe Hustler, Don't Drink the Water and those Smokey and the Banditfilms, but outside of the above, he is known for "The Honeymooners." Answer? There's Gleason, up against Anthony Quinn, who plows his way with his cheap suits and wrecked face and childish indignation and Quinn steals every scene that Mickey Rooney doesn't steal--and all Rooney requires is a silent sigh and the camera melts all over him. Gleason suffered the fate of being a good actor in the company of great ones. 
   In the process, he helped Quinn, Mooney and Serling himself shine. A very giving man was Jackie Gleason. 
   Best line in the movie: Mountain is schnockered as he boards an elevator on his way to a job interview. On the way up, he looks at a pearl necklace-style woman who is holding her poodle in her arms. Mountain looks at her and says: "I like animals--all kinds of animals.  Is that a dog?"
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  • Home
  • Links
  • The Deluge
    • Veiled Threats >
      • 1939-1945
      • 1946-1963
      • 1964-1975
      • 1976-1985
      • Born Losers
      • Don't Look Back
      • Bonnie and Clyde
      • Cool Hand Luke
      • The Graduate
      • Up Tight!
      • Cycle Savages
      • Wild in the Streets
      • Never a Dull Moment
      • Yellow Submarine
      • Night of the Living Dead
      • Faces
      • The Love Bug
      • Midnight Cowboy
      • Easy Rider
      • Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice
      • Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid
      • They Shoot Horses, Don't They?
      • The Magic Christian
      • Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song
      • The Landlord
      • The Ballad of Cable Hogue
      • Getting Straight
      • The Bird with the Crystal Plumage
      • Five Easy Pieces
      • Godard in America
      • Gimme Shelter
      • Little Big Man
      • The Boys in the Band
      • Joe
      • The Garden of the Finzi-Continis
      • The Big Boss
      • There's a Girl in my Soup
      • The Liberation of L B Jones
      • Klute
      • The French Connection
      • Willie Dynamite
      • Helter Skelter
      • King: A Filmed Record
      • Get Carter
      • Harold and Maude
      • Panic in Needle Park
      • Across 110th Street
      • And Soon the Darkness
      • Deliverance
      • Rolling Thunder
      • Super Fly
      • Busting
      • The Ruling Class
      • The Harder They Come
      • Day of the Jackal
      • Play Misty For Me
      • The Jezebels
      • Sacco & Vanzetti
      • Badlands
      • Cold Turkey
      • Soldier Blue
      • American Graffiti
      • The Falcon and the Snowman
      • Watership Down
      • Scarecrow
      • Walking Tall
      • Frances
      • The Coca-Cola Kid
      • Bob Roberts
      • Bad Company
      • We Are Marshall
      • Patton
      • The Natural
      • The Crossing Guard
      • Reds
      • The Spook Who Sat by the Door
      • Mud
      • Who is Harry Nilsson
      • Ornette: Made in America
      • Six Degrees of Separation
      • This Film is Not Yet Rated
      • Incident at Oglala
      • That Championship Season
      • The Pope of Greenwich Village
      • Little Murders
      • Assault on Precinct 13
      • Capote
      • Inglourious Basterds
      • The Friends of Eddie Coyle
      • Scorpio
      • The Taking of Pelham One Two Three
      • A New Leaf
      • Seven Psychopaths
      • The Last House on the Left
      • The Deer Hunter
      • Let the Right One In
      • Colour Me Kubrick
      • A Time to Kill
      • A Scanner Darkly
      • Salem's Lot
      • Roman Polanksi: Wanted and Desired
      • The Seven-Ups
      • The Contender
      • Hoffa
      • The Pledge
      • American: The Bill Hicks Story
      • Donnie Brasco
      • Bugsy
      • Milk
      • Reservoir Dogs
      • Glengarry Glen Ross
      • V for Vendetta
      • Trumbo
      • Two in the Wave
      • South of the Border
      • Into the Abyss
      • God Bless America
  • Before the Deluge
    • The Bicycle Thief
    • Judgment at Nuremberg
    • Five Minutes to Live
    • The Manchurian Candidate
    • Hud
    • Pressure Point
    • Blow Up
    • Requiem for a Heavyweight
    • Hurry Sundown
  • Human Flood
    • Jean-Luc Godard >
      • Breathless
      • Masculine Feminine
      • Film Socialisme
    • Brian De Palma >
      • Sisters
      • The Fury
    • Stanley Kubrick >
      • Lolita
      • 2001: A Space Odyssey
      • A Clockwork Orange
      • The Shining
      • Full Metal Jacket
    • Francis Coppola >
      • The Conversation
      • Apocalypse Now
    • Woody Allen >
      • Take the Money and Run
      • Bananas
      • Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But were Afraid to Ask
      • Sleeper
      • Love and Death
      • Annie Hall
      • Interiors
      • Manhattan
      • Stardust Memories
      • Zelig
      • Broadway Danny Rose
      • The Purple Rose of Cairo
      • Hannah and Her Sisters
      • Radio Days
    • Robert Altman >
      • M*A*S*H
      • Brewster McCloud
      • 3 Women
      • Nashville
      • The Gingerbread Man
      • Ready to Wear
      • Gosford Park
      • The Player
    • Luis Bunuel >
      • The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie
    • Roman Polanski >
      • Cul-de-Sac
      • Rosemary's Baby
      • MacBeth
      • The Tenant
    • Martin Scorsese >
      • Boxcar Bertha
    • Steven Spielberg >
      • Duel
    • Oliver Stone >
      • Talk Radio
    • Orson Welles >
      • F For Fake
    • Akira Kurosawa >
      • DODES'KA-DEN
    • Max Ophuls
    • John Ford >
      • The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
    • John Huston
    • Frank Capra
    • Billy Wilder
    • Roger Corman
    • Bernardo Bertolucci
    • Elia Kazan
    • William Wyler
    • Spike Lee
    • Francois Truffaut >
      • 400 Blows
      • Jules and Jim
      • Bed and Board
    • Jean Renoir
    • Federico Fellini
    • Charlie Chaplin
    • John Cassavetes
    • Agnes Vargas
    • Alain Resnais
    • Eric Rohmer >
      • Claire's Knee
    • Ida Lupino
    • Leni Riefenstahl
    • Penny Marshall
    • Costa-Gavras >
      • The Confession
      • Missing
    • Alfred Hitchcock >
      • Spellbound
      • Shadow of a Doubt
      • The Birds
      • I Confess
      • Dial M for Murder
      • Rear Window
      • To Catch a Thief
      • The Wrong Man
      • Suspicion
      • Saboteur
      • Lifeboat
      • Notorious
      • Rope
      • North by Northwest
      • Psycho
      • The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934)
  • No Particular Place to Go
  • The Pits
    • The Big Chill
    • W. C. Fields and Me
    • Zabriskie Point
    • Eat The Document
    • Hitler: The Last Ten Days
    • A Boy and His Dog
    • A Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich
    • The Executioner's Song
    • The Visitors
    • Paul McCartney Really is Dead
    • Going Places
    • Pi
    • Erik the Viking
    • Sometimes They Come Back
    • Thinner
    • Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
    • A Bullet for Pretty Boy
  • Links