FAT CITY

Adapting Leonard Gardner’s 1969 boxing novel of the same name, describing the dreams and desperate, dilatory delusions that proliferate at the lower rungs of the Sweet Science, onetime California lightweight hopeful — and longtime Hollywood black sheep — Huston dug deep into his bruised gut and pulled out this rueful masterpiece, one of the finest boxing films ever made. Concerning a dipso has-been (Stacy Keach) and his shoddy mentorship of a never-will-be (Jeff Bridges). But they're both fighting other battles, for Bridges his knocked-up girlfriend Candy Clark (in her debut), and for Keach his involvement with (Oscar-nominated) Susan Tyrell, tearing it up as the barfly to end all barflies (“boozed, blowsy, and so good, so out of her mind with hope and depression, so used, so soiled, so lifelike…” – David Thompson). Maybe just one more win for Keach, and he could get it all back. But what changes if you actually win?

All location-shot by the great Conrad Hall (“with lovely shabby color that looks like paper used to wrap a burger” –Thompson) in Stockton, California at its dustiest, these are perhaps the Losing-est in Huston’s gallery of Beautiful Losers, with terrific if decidedly unglamorous boxing scenes and a cast seeded with actual fighters, most notably former welterweight champ Curtis Cokes in his only acting role, letter-perfect as Tyrell’s sometimes boyfriend “Earl.”

"Made more than 50 years ago by Huston, FAT CITY could also be thought of evolving from Neorealism, but in an American context, and in the hands of major Hollywood figures. Conrad Hall’s work here is one of the best examples of 1970s cinematography, that ‘old school’ period before any new technologies made their appearance." —Jeff Wall