The Unspoken Antisemitism of ‘Cinderella Man’
The feel-good boxing drama has a major problem at its core
Ron Howard and Russell Crowe made a successful pair in the early 2000s. The director-actor duo piled on the accolades with the Oscar-winning A Beautiful Mind, in 2001 and followed that up four years later with Cinderella Man. Both movies, in their different ways, are period dramas about historical figures placed into a highly simplified and fictionalized version of their life stories.
Cinderella Man, in particular, is a feel-good movie ripped right out of the ever reliable hero’s journey. James J. Braddock, a once-promising young boxer who falls on hard times due to injuries and the 1929 stock market crash, gets a second chance at glory in the ring. Howard pulls the right narrative strings. Crowe does a great job playing his everyman character, and Renee Zellweger is admirable as his everywoman wife.
The movie, then, becomes more of a fable about the common man, the backbone of America, seeking a fighting chance in a world that has trampled them. Braddock is an easy guy to root for, a family man with a strong moral center and sense of honor.
What makes him even easier to root for is the villain, Max Baer, is a literal killer. His reputation is made on the deaths of two boxers in the ring, a…