Golden Boy

Ano de centenário de William Holden filme #3. O Holden está tão bebê aqui que dá até medo de deixá-lo sozinho com La Stanwyck. No mais é um excelente filme cujo ponto alto é a sequência de luta final em que o pai de Holden (Cobb) se evidencia e diferencia da usual platéia de lutas de boxe sendo demasiado sensível ao lado do público ansioso por sangue e o roteiro de Odets é exatamente sobre isso: sensibilidade versus brutalidade.

Lumpy but enjoyable boxing movie highlighted by Stanwyck's luminous performance and her crackling chemistry with Holden (even if Holden himself is a little too blandly earnest) -- their romance adds immeasurable heft to the tale; Menjou also brings shading to the 'gruff manager with a heart of gold'. Less successful are scenes with Holden's family, with Cobb overacting shamelessly as the Italian patriarch (props to the makeup department - it's hard to believe Cobb was only 27 when he made this!)

While I'm not familiar with the original Odets play, word is that it's pretty well bowdlerized here--Pauline Kael calls it "only semi-reprehensible". Yet there's enough left of the original material to move the audience, and one really cares about the protagonists. Stanwyck and Holden are wonderful, Joseph Calleia is impeccably tailored evil, and the rest of the cast is excellent. A few dated touches, like the exaggerated Italian immigrant household... and a black fighter named Chocolate Drop!

This is a good start for William Holden. Not unlike how John Garfield had just gotten his first big break as well - in a boxing related movie. Not as instant magnetism like Garfield, but still a strong range for a screen rookie in a sentimental role. Golden Boy lacks the major peaks to take it where one could have hoped it would go, but it's a solid movie with several quality scenes, as well as likable performances from Barbara Stanwyck, Adolphe Menjou & Lee J. Cobb.

Mamoulian keeps things moving, Barbara Stanwyck is wonderful, the young William Holden is intense and charming, and even the brittle Adolphe Menjou--for the first time since "Morocco"--is sympathetic and vulnerable. But all Odets' leftism is drained from the play, leaving almost nothing but Broadway cliche and working class sentimentality. (Lee J. Cobb overracts as usual, this time with an Italian accent.)

Ouch.