Day of the Fight (1951) | 2023 Restoration (Theatrical Cut), and a Scene from Robert Wise's Real-Time Masterpiece, The Set-Up (1949)

Re-posted by N.S./RM

Day of the Fight (1951) | 2023 Restoration (Theatrical Cut)
By Split Negative

"69 views nov 20, 2025
"2023 restoration from a 35mm print of the theatrical version, which premiered at Paramount Theatre in New York on April 26, 1951 in front of a screening of My Forbidden Past.

"Day of the Fight: Documentary about a day in the life of middleweight boxer Walter Cartier. Narrated by Douglas Edwards. Directed by Stanley Kubrick.
Transcript at youtube.

N.S.: Fantastic. The intensity of Robert Rein's script, Douglas Edwards' staccato delivery, and Fried's score made it seem more like a feature.

I wonder to what degree Kubrick was influenced by Robert Wise's real-time masterpiece The Set-Up, starring Robert Ryan, who'd been a college heavyweight champ for four straight years at Dartmouth College.

The Set-Up, written by Joseph Moncure March and Art Cohn, shot by Milton R. Krasner and edited by Roland Gross, however, is much more brutal and realistic. The close-ups make it really seem as if Rob Ryan is getting the hell beat out of him. And the ending, with Ryan and his co-star, Audrey Totter, as his long-suffering, loving wife, is heart-breaking, one of the greatest fade-outs ever. Was it the greatest boxing picture ever made? Could well be.

Beyond being a masterpiece on its own terms, The Set-Up was extremely influential, spawning two later real-time masterpieces, William Bowers, William Sellers, Andre de Toth and Henry King's The Gunfighter (1950), starring an uglied-up Greg Peck, and what for one year (until Jack Sher and the Super-Chief's Shane) was the greatest Western ever, Carl Foreman, Fred Zinnemann, and Dimitri Tiomkin's High Noon (1952).


Day of the Fight (1951) | 2023 Restoration (Theatrical Cut)





"One punch away"




P.S. to RM: I'm hunting after the movie you recently mntioned in a comment.