Watched: 02/27/2026
Format: TCM on my DVR
Viewing: I have no idea anymore
Director:Robert Wise
It took me a minute to get to The Set-Up (1949) as the next film up in my Robert Wise retrospective watch, mostly because I had just watched it last April. That said - while I don't have a list of favorite films at this point, if I did, I suppose this would be one of them. It stars two of my favorites with Robert Ryan and Audrey Totter, who both get to do great character work. I'm not sure you get Rocky without this movie, but maybe - though I think they share a lot in their DNA.
Ryan plays an aging boxer - he's over thirty-five, and he's still boxing the small circuit, nowhere near the top of the card. He's still living hand-to-mouth and has a girl who - until recently - believed in him, Julie (Totter). The night we find them, she's lost faith. She can't stand seeing him go into the ring and get pummeled, see him after when he can't even recognize her, his brains are so scrambled. He's wrecking his health and their future for a dream that isn't possible.
Told in real-time (no fooling - like, to the minute) the movie follows roughly 75 minutes that will define the lives of both.
What's fascinating is that this movie has That Barton Fink Feeling - it's a movie about people living on the edge. And those people are not just Stoker Thompson and Julie. The movie has over a dozen real characters, and everyone is going through something.
Wallace Ford is a trainer who stitches up fighters but with a minute downtime turns to romance magazines. James Edwards plays a fighter who actually is on his way up - a real golden boy. We have the fighter who is now punch drunk. This arena is the bread and circuses for the working class, people who revel in the violence others inflict on each other for the chance at money and small-time glory. We get a wide array of spectators from the blind-man who wants his friend to narrate the fight for him to the housewife who claims she hates violence but seems almost turned on by the fights.
I don't know that they make stories like this anymore - that are an observer looking around a place and saying "don't just look at the main character, look at all of this. Look at these people who are here. Why are they here? Any one of them could be the main character." And they could. Everyone here has a story - and I think that was something that felt like it came from stage shows of the 20th Century, and has kind of been left behind as rules of "what works" have been created and reinforced and followed algorithmically. A remake of The Set-Up would dispense with all the supposedly extraneous side characters, but they're what paint the scenario - and no one would know why it doesn't work anymore.
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| I dunno. I think one should do what it takes to keep Audrey happy. |
Of course, it is Stoker and Julie's story. Walking the streets while Stoker preps, she's alone and miserable - we can't tell if Julie is going to leave Stoker or throw herself off a bridge - either one an end to her dream of living with the man she loves because he can't stop chasing glory.
SPOILERS
Meanwhile, Stoker doesn't know his own manager thinks he's so done in the ring that the manager has worked with a mobster who wants Stoker to throw his fight. Stoker's cut out of the deal and - in his ignorance of the situation and to prove he's not washed up - wins. Which the mobster takes as a betrayal.
Years ago, I believe this was the movie that made me look at IMDB and realize how much stuff Robert Wise had directed. Just unreal what this guy has done.
I didn't reach for my DVD of the movie to watch it - it had played in HiDef on TCM and was still on my DVR. Plus it had an intro and outro by Dave Karger who talked about Wise's career, which was perfect.
While this isn't a noir in the "detective and femme fatale" mode, it is 1000% in the genre. There's mob activity, we have a hero pursuing something he shouldn't, and it will cost him everything. He's in a situation he helped create but can't control. And Audrey's in it.
This movie did *very well* upon its release, riding at number one for two weeks. Not bad for a cheaper RKO picture - and launching Wise into A-List pictures.
Plus the boxing is pretty wild.
Recommended.
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