Day of the Fight
| Day of the Fight | |
|---|---|
title card
|
|
| Directed by | Stanley Kubrick |
| Produced by | Stanley Kubrick Jay Bonafield (uncredited) |
| Written by | Robert Rein (narration) Stanley Kubrick |
| Starring |
Walter Cartier Vincent Cartier |
| Narrated by | Douglas Edwards |
| Music by | Gerald Fried |
| Cinematography | Stanley Kubrick Alexander Singer |
| Edited by | Julian Bergman Stanley Kubrick (uncredited) |
| Distributed by | RKO Radio Pictures |
|
Release date
|
|
|
Running time
|
12 minutes |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Budget | US$3900 |
Day of the Fight is a 1951 American short subject documentary film directed by Stanley Kubrick. Kubrick financed the film himself.
Shot in black-and-white, the film is based on an earlier photo feature he had done as a photographer for Look magazine in 1949.
Day of the Fight shows Irish-American middleweight boxer Walter Cartier during the height of his career, on the day of a fight with middleweight Bobby James, which took place on April 17, 1950.
The film opens with a short section on boxing's history, and then follows Cartier through his day, as he prepares for the 10 P.M. bout that night. He eats breakfast in his West 12th Street apartment in Greenwich Village, then goes to early mass and eats lunch at his favorite restaurant. At 4 P.M., he starts preparations for the fight. By 8 P.M., he is waiting in his dressing room at Laurel Gardens in Newark, New Jersey for the fight to begin.
We then see the fight itself, where he comes out victorious in a short match.
Kubrick and Alexander Singer used daylight-loading Eyemo cameras that take 100-foot spools of 35mm black-and-white film to shoot the fight, with Kubrick shooting hand-held (often from below) and Singer's camera on a tripod. The 100-foot reels required constant reloading, and Kubrick did not catch the knock-out punch which ended the bout because he was reloading. Singer did, however.
Day of the Fight is the first credit on composer Gerald Fried's resume. Fried, a childhood friend of Kubrick, went on to score or conduct (or both) over 100 films. In 1977, he shared an Emmy Award with Quincy Jones for the music for the TV mini-series Roots, and was nominated for an Academy Award in 1976 for Birds Do It, Bees Do It.
...
Wikipedia