Noir Watch: The Set-Up (1949)

we always stan Totter and Ryan

Watched:  04/21/2025

Format:  Noir Alley on TCM

Viewing:  fourth?  fifth?

Director:  Robert Wise

It's been years since I watched The Set-Up (1949), and while reading Eddie Muller's new book, an updated Dark City Dames - a collection of bios of several stars of the noir movement, I was pondering rewatching it when TCM's Noir Alley showcase went ahead and programmed the film for last weekend.  

It's no secret we're fans of stars Robert Ryan and Audrey Totter, or director Robert Wise.  But because Robert Ryan and Audrey Totter aren't really household names, and it's a grimy boxing picture of its surface, I'm not shocked if you haven't heard of or seen this one.  

The film comes in at a taught, trim 73 minutes.  And, novel for its era, the movie unspools in an approximation of real-time - taking place in one night of crisis for an aging boxer and his wife, who can't take watching him get beaten every night.  Not anymore.

All Robert Ryan's character, "Stoker" Thompson, knows how to do is fight, something he's done since he was a kid.  And he's now dreaming of the path to victory that will lead to the one big fight and payout that will enable him to have money for a different future for he and Totter.  And the amount he's dreaming of is peanuts.  The purse he's hoping for is just $500 (about $6700 per inflation to 2025).  And he's willing to risk getting his brains scrambled for that chance.  

Of course, Totter's Julie just wants her husband intact and to finish his career so she doesn't need to see him take punishment any more, and for him to see he can be a winner in some other way.

Thompson has been losing so often, his manager takes money from a gangster to ensure the boxer will take a dive, but the manager and trainer figure Stoker will just go down, anyway, as he's done every fight, and so they don't cut him in.  Meanwhile, Julie, for the first time, can't make herself go to the fight, and, instead, walks the streets of "Paradise City", trying to figure out what to do - surely leave Thompson.  

Meanwhile, we see Thompson readying for his fight, the last of the night.  And a parade of boxers share the locker room with him, representing different aspects of the boxing life.  The nervous kid out for his first fight, the guy on his way up, the guy who didn't quit in time and is permanently punch-drunk...  

There's an unspoken poetry to it, watching Stoker see his own life before him in these other boxers.  And the wordless storytelling continues into the ring where Stoker seems sure to go down as predicted, but he can't lose - not tonight.

I'm sure in the past I've compared the movie to the wrestling picture from Barton Fink, where Barton wants to write about a wrestler's bout as a metaphor.  And it feels like this movie is that - as a boxing film.  And that's okay.  

go to her, you fool!

I appreciate that the movie keeps it simple and clean while also knowing how to show rather than tell.  That's some tough stuff to do in a film, but this is Robert Wise.  And credit to his DP, Milton Krasner, who captures the environs with some phenomenal lighting and smart use of angles (although Muller did mention that Wise had storyboarded the whole thing tightly).  And credit to sports journalist-turned-screenwriter Art Cohn for setting up the story for Wise and Co.

But, yeah, the imagery in this movie sticks with you, from the ticking clocks to the mad-dog faces of the boxing fans to the knowing smile of gangster Little Boy (Alan Baxter).  

Both Ryan and Totter play against type.  Ryan's big break was an antisemitic asshole in Crossfire, and he played a lot of heavies.  Even when he was the hero, he was usually a bit rough and tumble.  Here, he's all sympathy.  During this era, Totter was sometimes brought in to play bad girls and sexpots, but here, she's as far from that as imaginable.  Remarkably, Ryan and Totter only have two brief scenes together - this is a dark night of the soul for both, but a lot gets resolved in the minutes in between - and they almost seem to share scenes even as the other isn't physically there.

Anyway, this is a favorite.  It's not the same kind of boxing picture I also like, like finally seeing Rocky and Creed.  But I think as a movie, it nails what it's doing, and, like Rocky, is a great story about two down-on-their-luck people who have each other in this mixed up world.