Eureka Blu-ray Film Review

Champion (1949) • Blu-ray [Eureka! Masters of Cinema]

In the USA of the 1940s, a boxer’s rise to success in the ring is paralleled by increasing conflict in his private life.

Nearly three decades before a boxing movie gave Sylvester Stallone his entrée to the big time, Kirk Douglas had his breakthrough with the same genre. But Champion could hardly be more different from Rocky (1976). Described by Jason A. Ney on this Blu-ray’s commentary as an “anti-boxing film”, it has more in common with Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull (1980) in its portrayal of a boxer whose triumphs in the ring are paralleled by an increasingly pugilistic and destructive attitude toward life outside it. (The two films are set at much the same time, too.)

A major success in its day, even if it’s not as well-remembered as other classics of the immediate post-war period, Champion was also a big step forward for Stanley Kramer in his production career before he turned to directing, and was the deserving recipient of an Academy Award for film editing as well as several other nominations (Douglas and…