Fat City (1972) is directed by John Huston (The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep) and adapted from a novel by Leonard Gardner who wrote the screenplay as well. One of the first big roles for Stacy Keach who plays Billy Tully, a pro boxer who had a name, but is now drifting in bars and flop houses. At the start of the film, Keach’s character heads to a gym to train and meets Ernie Munger (a young Jeff Bridges). They spar together and Billy tells Ernie that he should train with his former manager Ruben (Nicholas Colasanto). I thought the movie would be about Billy and Ernie hanging out together, but it charts two different threads, seeing Ernie train and start boxing in small fights while Billy works in the fields and blows his pay on getting drunk. Susan Tyrell plays Oma Lee Greer, an alcoholic with a knack for drama, and she and Billy start up a relationship after running into each other at the same bar. Fat City might be billed as a boxing drama but its real interest is in skid row and people slumming through the grind. Keach’s character keeps talking about getting back into training, and redemption is dangled as a promising dream in the ring. I knew that Fat City was going to be a 1970s bummer about dreamers and losers, but I didn’t realise how funny it would be as well, particularly the boxing managers grouching and talking shop (Colasanto and his off-sider Art Aragon just seem like the real deal with their unpolished charm), and Susan Tyrell’s tour de force performance (seriously, an amazing piece of acting that goes from perfect comic timing to melancholy depth). Stacy Keach wins the award for an actor being at his physical peak but making himself look completely like shit; he is excellent and believable as this weathered palooka, balanced by Bridges’ fresh-faced, affable charm. Everything feels so dialled in and authentic, the camera work is observational and the editing rhythm is relaxed and unhurried. Right until the film springs on you its devastating conclusion. Amazing to think of a Hollywood lifer like John Huston being able to make one of the best downer 1970s character-based movies well before continuing on with big budget productions later in the decade like The Man Who Be King, Annie, Victory, etc. A movie I’d heard and read about as being great, yet still surprised me by how great it was. As perfect a movie to feature Kris Kristoffersen’s ‘Help Me Make It Through The Night’ in the opening and closing sequences. Rented on iTunes. Recommended.
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