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Sep 14, 2023 · 229 views 6 months ago. Starring Audrey Totter and Robert Ryan. Directed by Robert Wise from an adapted screenplay by art Cohn. Find the full film here -...
- 5 min
- 357
- Classic Films
The Set-Up (1949) We’re crossing into the seedy sporting life for our film noir theme we’re calling “THE LEFT HAND ENDEAVOR” and what sport feels more noir than boxing?
- 32 min
- MOVIEHUMPERS
May 25, 2017 · Today's the big day. We finish off strong with one of my favorite films of all time and one of the best noirs ever made.
- 5 min
- 925
- Playback Picture Palace
The Set-Up: Directed by Robert Wise. With Robert Ryan, Audrey Totter, George Tobias, Alan Baxter. Expecting the usual loss, a boxing manager takes bribes from a betting gangster without telling his fighter.
- (10K)
- Crime, Film-Noir, Sport
- Robert Wise
- 1949-04-02
Lacking any musical score whatsoever, Wise and his crew employ brilliant composition, lighting, and editing to tell the story as intimately as possible (the fighters’ bodies glow in the fluorescent from above, Ryan’s weathered face is juxtaposed with the youthful up-and-comers in the locker room).
A washed-up 35 year old boxer, Stoker/Bill Thompson (Robert Ryan), is scheduled to fight an up and coming 23 year old. His wife, Julie (Audrey Totter) is particularly fearful tonight, afraid that Bill will finally get badly hurt in the ring by this much younger fighter.
The Set-Up (1949), with a script based on a long narrative poem, is one of the great boxing films in an era in which there were many, such as the noir Body and Soul (1947) and the marginally noir Champion (1949). Told in real time, the 72-minute film is also set entirely at night, and rarely has a film captured a sense of fatalism and doom as ...
