SOMEBODY UP THERE LIKES ME

US, 1956, 110 minutes, Black and White.
Paul Newman, Pier Angeli, Everett Sloane, Eileen Heckart, Sal Mineo, Harold J. Stone, Steve McQueen?.
Directed by Robert Wise.

Somebody Up There Likes Me is a boxing story based on the career of Rocky Graziano. Well known in the '50s, he is not so well remembered as other boxing champions. However, the film gives an opportunity to see a 1950s perspective on the boxing tradition in the United States and some of its stars.

The film was directed by Robert Wise, an editor who worked in some of the Val Lewton horror films of the '40s as well as on Citizen Kane. He was to move into direction in the late '40s and directed a wide range of fine black and white dramas at 20th Century-Fox? in the 1950s. These ranged from The Day the Earth Stood Still to The Desert Fox. During the '60s he was to move to bigger-budget projects and won Oscars for two musicals, West Side Story and, of course, The Sound of Music. He was to continue with dramas in the '60s and into the '70s such as The Andromeda Strain, The Liberation of L. B. Jones. He also directed the first cinema feature of the Star Trek series.

One of Robert Wise's best films was the boxing classic, the brief The Set-Up? with Robert Ryan and Jan Sterling. Wise draws on this experience for Somebody Up There Likes Me.

He was served well with a star cast, Paul Newman in one of his earliest films and about to emerge as a star and screen presence. Pier Angeli had also established a strong career in the early '50s as a waif-like and vulnerable heroine. (She had also appeared the previous year with Newman in The Silver Chalice.) The supporting cast is particularly strong and includes a young Steve McQueen?.

The film is not remembered as one of the great boxing films but it takes its respectable place among them.

1. The overtones of this title? Its meaning? As optimistic tone for this film? The relevance and effect of the song?

2. Was the black and white photography appropriate for this film? The photography and editing? The tough harsh world? The boxing atmosphere? City and slum locations, the boxing locations etc.? Did these add to the film for its authenticity?

3. How much of the film was homage to Rocky Graziano? How authentic was the story? Did the film aim for realism? Factual? Or did it moralise and have a lesson? Admiration and encouragement to people? Was it convincing in these aspects?

4. How well did the film portray the boxing world? Was it geared for boxing fans? Or other audiences? What admiration did the film have for the boxing world? Criticisms of it? Did it give adequately the pros and cons of the fight game?

5. How well did the film sustain its atmosphere? Was it successful in presenting its vigour and world concisely or was it a rambling film veering toward sentiment, even sentimentality? Why?

6. How interesting and effective were the opening sequences? Rocky's back- ground, the city, slums, youth, poverty, the toughness of the district, relationship with friends, petty crimes, reform school?

7. Rocky's relationship with his parents? How important for the type of person he was? His relationship with mother? Father? His father's boxing dreams? How effective were the reappearances of the family at Rocky's return? The influence of his father? The interaction of the two? How important for the culmination of the film? His father achieving something in his son?

8. The importance of the army sequences in Rocky's life? Dramatically for the film?

9. How interesting a person was Rocky in himself? A lout with his background, the pressures on his life? The good and bad in him? What kind of man was he? A man of conscience? His success in boxing? The confrontation of the pressures, the questions of honesty? His reaction to fame? His opting out? The drive and ambition that kept him going and his return? The sense of achievement?

10. How did marriage change him? Was Norma a convincing heroine? The influence on Rocky's life? The quality of their love? The pressures on Norma? The reaction to these? Her desperation? Was her final support of him convincing?

11. Why did Irving Cohen believe in him? The strength of this belief and encouragement? The difficulties in communication? Training sequences? The final faith being vindicated? What kind of man was Cohen in this film?

12. How convincing were the dramatics with the hoodlums and the questions about honesty?

13. The importance dramatically of the final fight? A desperate fight, its brutality, a climax in life, the way it was filmed?

14. Was the ending appropriate? A happy ending? Sentiment?

15. What major values about life and human beings did the film represent? How convincingly and impressively?