Plus dure sera la chute

Respected sports writer Eddie Willis (Humphrey Bogart) is jobless when his newspaper folds. Fight promoter Nick Benko (Rod Steiger) wants to hire him as the press agent for his new heavyweight fighter Toro Moreno. The problem is that Toro is a big dumb giant stiff. Benko schemes to rig Toro's fights with nobodies building up his resume and get him a fight with the heavyweight champion Buddy Brannen.

Bogart is terrific as the morally conflicted Eddie. It's impressive considering he was unwell and this is his last film. He still carries the movie. Steiger is incredible as the bombastic croaked promoter. It's also a fine morality tale. The fight game has always been corrupted and this takes it to the extreme.

What a wonderful way to end one of the all-time great careers. Bogart's last film, "The Harder They Fall" is a tough, uncompromising, cynical look at the fight world, and Bogart is magnificent as a down and out reporter who sells out to crooked boxing promoters.

One of the things so excellent about the film is that Bogie is surrounded by fantastic performances, particularly that of Rod Steiger as a vicious, greedy promoter, Mike Lane as the big dumb lug Steiger uses to accomplish his goals, and Max Baer as an egomaniacal champion.

"The Harder They Fall" spares us nothing - not the violence in the ring, the treatment of individuals like merchandise, the preying on the downtrodden. And it doesn't spare us Bogart's haggard looks, either. However, his energy is great and his characterization of a writer turned press rep, a man who looks the other way, is a powerful one.

There's a story often told about Bogart in his last days. Friends would come over to visit in the afternoon, and Bogart would climb into a dumbwaiter in order to get down to the first floor. He was that small (80 pounds) and that weak. But there was never anything weak about the mind, the will, or the persona.

Here's a film that tries to deal with corruption, of how the fighting game is built around construction, of the ways results are fixed, all the lies and all the tricks, as the boxers follow mostly, their instructions. The performances of all is quite top drawer, Toro Moreno by Mike Lane makes quite a score, Rod Steiger's crooked Nick, is aggressive and so slick, but Humphrey Bogart is the one you just adore. So if you're looking for a film that works today, that's packed with cheats, and layered with foul play, that marks the ending of a story, an actor's sublime oratory, light a cigarette, but do find an ashtray.

I just saw this film and now realize that Sly Stallone must have watched it about a hundred times before staging the fight scenes in Rocky – he even recreated the subtle touch when Toro's coach cuts his eyelid in the fight to release the built-up blood (except in this film, you only see him go for the eye with a scalpel but don't see him actually cut it as you do in Rocky). The final fight at the end of this movie is THE most gruesome fight ever filmed. Stallone tried to capture this in Rocky, but it has nowhere NEAR the realism of the fight in The Harder They Fall. This is partly because it is shot in black and white, which for some reason makes everything seem more gruesome than color; partly because of the foggy, staggering way it is shot, as if you are seeing the punches through the groggy boxer's eyes; and partly because the actor who played Toro was not a star like Stallone or DeNiro in Raging Bull – they could make him look like a true wreck, a distorted, disfigured wreck – without fear of diminishing his "star" quality handsomeness.

My favorite line in this movie is when Bogart angrily asks Steiger how he'd like to have his jaw broken like Toro's. Steiger's henchmen immediately start to converge on Bogart, who says, "He didn't have 5 guys in the ring with him." It's a great line that brings home how the powerful are protected from the very pain they inflict on others.

The movie's title, from the old saying, "the bigger they are, the harder they fall," is also very ironic, because the "big" guys – Steiger and the corrupt fight backers – actually never "fall" – it is only the "little" guys, like Toro, who fall the hardest.

By the way, it was really spooky seeing Max Baer himself re-create his historic fight with Primo Carnera in this film, which is based on Max Baer's historic fight with Primo Carnera! You can see a film of this 1934 fight online, in which Baer knocks Carnera down 11 times in 11 rounds. By round 2, Baer was actually chasing Carnera around the ring, and at least 3 times he knocked him down so hard that he actually fell on top of him!

I have seen "The Harder They Fall" and always enjoyed it but it's interesting seeing it with the short clips Turner Classic Movies was showing on corruption in boxing. This is a good example of the 1950's noir theme of examining corruption in politics, society, and in business. Here the gangsters that were involved with "standard" gangster activities such as robbery were replaced by ones that hid in the shadows of businesses - in this case boxing. It also touches on everyday people being drawn into doing corrupt things to " keep up with the Joneses". The shadowy effects used in the boxing ring, locker rooms, travel bus etc mirrors shady dealings that were happening throughout the movie while the realism approach added to it relevance. I love the great pivotal lines delivered by George ( Jersey Joe Walcott) "Some guys can sell that other guys just can't."

It's Humphrey Bogart's last movie so it's always a little hard to watch. But it is a great one. Rod Steiger always does such a wonderful job. It seems to me when he's trying to explain why he's doing corrupt things he has this underlying tone of saying "Why are you so upset that I'm taking advantage of you?!" Which makes his character even more despicable. It's also interesting to compare Steiger's and Bogart's style of acting since they came from two different schools.