As Henry Decoin was first a sports correspendent , then a novelist (« quinze rouns » took place in the boxing rings ),it was only natural he made a film dealing with the come back of a boxer .And the principal is a former boxing champion,Georges Carpentier , whose heyday was the mid-twenties ,and who afterward made a handful of films.
Coming after the anodyne « les bleus du ciel » , « toboggan » can be considered Decoin's first film noir , before he gave up the genre with Danielle Darrieux 's comedies ; its extreme pessimism predates such works as « non coupable » or « la fille du diable » .
The beginning is impressive:kids in rags playing in a shanty town ; then a brute beating up his lover
A man comes to her rescue and falls in love with her ; he once was a boxing champiBon and he shows her news items which become archive films ,real-life flashbacks , an unusual trick at the time.
A boxing match fails to enthuse the audience who chants the name of the former champion ; he's retired now and lives in poverty (in true life,Carpentier was ruined in the 1929 stock-market crash ),but an unscrupulous manager urges him to make a come back ;they really « make » a would be champion, his lover is dressed up as a lady;but he's 36 , he's self-righteous, he refuses the fixed fights and he's not sure of himself anymore. But his woman is not prepared to lose this life of luxury which sharply contrasts with her former slum .Do you love me, the ex-champion says,or is it the money ,the fur coats and the jewels? He is soon to know.
An insistent song « la vie est un toboggan » (=life has its ups and downs) sums it up in an admirable succinct style;the harder ,they come ....This haunting son makes the ending even more desperate as the principal disappears in darkness.
