Review: The Harder They Fall (1956)

Humphrey Bogart’s final film, The Harder They Fall, is a late classic-era noir that sought to expose the corruption behind the scenes of organized boxing. Bogie shot the picture after his diagnosis with throat cancer at the beginning of 1956 and you can see the pain of the disease that ultimately killed him in his watery eyes and deliberate movements throughout the film; this is Bogie as faded and frail as he ever was on screen. However, Bogie, the consummate professional and titan of Old Hollywood, channels the pain into the performance as a former sports journalist who is sick of living paycheck to paycheck and wants to finally cash in. The only problem is he’s got something of a conscience, which grows too big to ignore when he gets a gig as a PR man for a crooked sports manager, Nick Benko (Rod Steiger). Nick plans to trick and position a lumbering giant from Argentina, Toro Moreno (Mike Lane), as a boxer, creating a cash cow through fixed matches built around Toro’s massive physique and Eddie’s PR hype.

As a morality play, The Harder They Fall is standard Hollywood fare, with Eddie’s mounting conscience and Nick’s ruthlessness pushing him into action to save the innocent Toro. But you don’t watch The Harder They Fall for the plotting, even if its function as an exposé may have been illuminating for audiences in 1956. You watch it for the haunting black and white photography from Burnett Guffey (who I praised in my essay on Burt Lancaster and Birdman of Alcatraz [1962]). You watch it for how Guffey and director Mark Robson—who cut his teeth as an editor and director with horror-noir maestro Val Lewton—craft stunning boxing sequences where the camera enters the ring and replicates the punchdrunk chaos of the fight, with close-ups lit by harsh top lights and blurring transitions between shots. (It’s hard not to think Martin Scorsese watched this film with purpose when prepping Raging Bull.) You watch it for its cynicism about boxing and its righteous anger at the exploitation of young men who die in the ring.

But you mostly watch it for Bogie and Steiger, two Hollywood titans who didn’t like each other much during that period, but who would go down as some of the best to ever work in the industry. As mentioned earlier, this is not the Bogie of The Maltese Falcon (1941) or even The African Queen (1951). You couldn’t believe he would punch a man, much less knock him out. But he still cuts an intimidating figure, through his intense stare and the dexterity of his verbal put downs. Philip Yordan’s script, based from Budd Schulberg’s novel, has some classic hard boiled language and Bogie relishes it. Bogie is controlled and mannered in his performance—in many ways, he embodied American theatricality in screen acting better than any of his peers—but nothing rings false. He lets his eyes guide how you should feel in any given scene, and his eyes never betray the fact that it’s a performance; even his physical pain is channeled into the character’s annoyance and uneasiness, as I mentioned at the outset.

Steiger is the polar opposite of Bogie as a performer. For him, nothing about the character is coiled in reserve. There’s no tension between what is said and what is lurking beneath the surface. Instead, there seems to be a direct line from his thoughts to his actions, without any terminal state in between. Like Brando (whom he starred alongside in On the Waterfront), Steiger manages to make it seem like you’re not watching a performance but a man living in real time. Such an approach to a crooked opportunist like Nick Benko hits home the reality of his evil. When he speaks of owning Toro and that these boxers are not men but means of profit, you believe him, which is electrifying and chilling to watch.

When Bogie and Steiger share the screen, the film crackles. There’s an undeniable tension between their performances, and it makes every moment compelling. The Harder They Fall may be most notable for being Bogie’s final film, but it’s the thespian boxing match at its centre that keeps it so compelling over half a century later.

8 out of 10

The Harder They Fall (1956, USA)

Directed by Mark Robson; written by Philip Yordan, based on the novel by Budd Schulberg; starring Humphrey Bogart, Rod Steiger, Jan Sterling, Mike Lane.

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