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The Champ (1931)
It takes tough skin to get out of this film without a few bruises and a bad black eye. Vidor was a man on the move, a director who believed firmly in a literal execution of the motion picture, and his camera movements flow so naturally that they disappear. Wallace Beery rightfully earned an Oscar for his title performance in 1931, but it means nothing without Jackie Cooper's raw symmetry; here is a child actor with a head on his shoulders, a person who understands his part and makes it real, and his success makes him look more mature than almost every adult actor in the film- many of whom are, ironically, childishly theatrical. This film is surprisingly rarely cited; its influence has been echoing between the walls of American cinema for seventy-eight years, and it quite obviously made an impression on Martin Scorsese, a director who would borrow thematically and stylistically from it in 1980. A knockout.
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