Theatrical Release: 1970-10-16 DVD Release: 2005-01-11 Torrent Release: 21-09-2013 by user
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Movie Genre:
Drama, Romance, Sport
Runtime:
103 min.
Parental Rating:
PG-13
Awards:
Nominated for 2 Oscars. Another 2 wins & 5 nominations.
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DESCRIPTION
Martin Ritt's screen adaptation of the Howard Sackler play which catapulted James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander to fame in 1967 remains essentially the filmed record of a stage work, but in its stinging eloquence, and in what is arguably Jones' finest performance on film, it retains a rewarding vitality. Set in 1910, the story of Jack Jefferson (Jones) and his attempt to establish his preeminence as the world heavyweight champion in the face of a white world which conspired against him, it's loosely based on the tragic life of Jack Johnson, the first African-American heavyweight champ. Like the play, the film reveals the ugliness of the boxer's life as a marked man after winning the heavyweight crown, hounded by boxing officials and politicians who used the illegality of his marriage to a white woman (Alexander) to keep on the run and out of the ring. Despite its huge cast of characters and backdrops spread across five continents, the film's tragic hero evokes virtually imprisoned classical figures such as Milton's Samson and Sophocles' Philoctetes, also gifted men unjustly tormented. Jones' towering performance gives voice to the pride and intelligence which makes the boxer's suffering even more acute, as he watches his career destroyed by racist cowards. Alexander in the lesser role of his tragic mate is easily his equal.
The grand success of Howard Sackler’s play, The Great White Hope, both in its original Washington, D.C. presentation and the subsequent Pulitzer prizewinning Broadway run, made it clear that historic confrontations of Negro versus white protagonists truly mirror the agonizing social tragedies of America. The irony is total: that in the world of sports, the symbolic nature of such conflicts is inescapable, and their denouements, the most cruel. The saga of the first black heavyweight champion in American boxing is the heart of the matter in this film, and The Great White Hope is a landmark in the dramatization of the ignoble depths into which the highest ideals can be plunged, because of the blight of racial prejudice. In retrospect, those years before WWI might be labeled the "age of innocence" by some, but today one recognizes the rigid stereotypes regarding black people which were so solidified in the consciousnesses of Americans during that era. The film recreates the period with observant brilliance, and the startling effectiveness of the leading roles, played by the original stars from Broadway, James Earl Jones and Jane Alexander, is intensified by the camera’s unstinting imagery. The epic nature of the background in the life of Jack Jefferson (the fictional name for Jack Johnson) becomes a sociological document that forcefully clarifies one celebrity’s difficulties in maintaining personal dignity and self-respect when the taboo of miscegenation stared his public in the face. Across the barriers of ignorance, however, this particular story underlines the admirable simplicity of human love between two people who are out-of-time, helplessly deafened by the slanders of both races and who, beyond the cheering of crowds, mutely consign themselves to fate and the conformity of death.
The Real One.
Jack Johnson became the first black heavyweight champion almost twenty-eight years before Jesse Owens won his four gold medals in front of Hitler in Berlin, close to thirty years before Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling in one round, thirty-nine years before Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier in major league baseball, fifty-six years before Cassius Clay changed his name to Muhammad Ali, and nearly sixty years before sprinters Tommy Smith and John Carlos gave the black power salute on the Olympic' medal stand in Mexico City.
The most infamous fight came on July 4, 1910 when James J. Jeffries came out of retirement to fight Johnson. After Johnson knocked Jeffries out, whites retaliated by going on a rampage and lynching dozens of black men throughout the nation.