Below The Belt

Don't be fooled by the subject matter, by the shooting date in the mid 70s, or the release date in the early 80s. It predates Rocky, but missed the boat on being the first true proletariat, underdog sports film. Even in the midst of a decade rife with gritty human comedies like Fat City, The Landlord, Cockfighter and Peckinpah's one-two punch The Ballad of Cable Hogue and Junior Bonner, Below The Belt feels too honest. Information on the film is scarce and you'd be hard pressed to find a decent copy anywhere (DVD, streaming, illegally, whatever, it's basically gone). I saw the film late night on TCM in a double feature with Robert Aldrich's tough-as-nails swansong ...All The Marbles (aside: all the best films have ellipses). Both films are linked by their narratives about unappreciated female wrestlers. It's the shading that separates them. Aldrich's film is among its director's finest works and colours inside the lines with abandon. Peter Falk and his two hotheaded charges lie, cheat and steal their way to the top of a very small heap. It's a joy watching them squabble in and out of the ring. Below The Belt is a much more low-key match. And not that Marbles doesn't ring true, but Below The Belt has a sense of diving headfirst into the pathetic and bleeding from the impact; you can't, or wouldn't care to, make this up. It's too painful, but in that pain is a beautiful truth. It's as real as documentary and director Robert Fowler went out of his way to make it so. Real wrestling footage is mixed with the drama, the combatants seem to mean it and the pros play themselves. The lead characters navigate these elements with the kind of wide-eyed trepidation you'd expect them to. They'd be just like us if they weren't perfectly, bracingly themselves.

Regina Baff plays Rosa Rubinsky, a waitress at an all-purpose arena near somewhere near New York City. The night we join her a wrestling league has commandeered the space, but it's just another night for her. She still has to fend off the same leery regulars and their well-rehearsed come-ons. In fact one of them goes a little too far and Rosa responds in kind by kicking his ass gently enough to avoid being fired. She happens to do this in front of wrestling promoter Bobby Fox (John C. Becher) who offers her a job. She's flattered but only half-heartedly commits. Her shock-jock boyfriend is only too happy to remind her that she's been down this road before but no matter what fad she decides to get into she always winds up back at square one. One gets the feeling he was more supportive the first few times, when she tried out macrame and french cooking, but like everyone else in Rosa's life he's too exhausted to do much more than politely put up with her decision. Of course his apathy seals the deal and days later she's at a gym learning the ropes. A few bumps in the road later and she's on a bus to the midwest to try her hand at the big leagues. In the process of getting ready she makes an enemy of veteran ass-kicker Terrible Tommy (Jane O'Brien), who doesn't much like playing by the rules and regulations. If Tommy wants to eat Rosa alive, she's going to do it for real. Rosa's going to need more than can-do spirit to beat her. 

Now, let's talk about those bumps in the road for this is where the film excels. First though it's worth pointing out that Regina Baff could not be more suited to the part. She seems too alternately too big and too small for her body, she never knows what to do with her hands, and her adorably porcine nose constantly reminds her she isn't a traditionally good-looking woman, which puts a "yeah, I know" expression on her face for most of the film which codes her as the underdog before the script has a chance to. Fittingly, Rosa's romantic life is exceptionally awkward. She and her boyfriend are so clearly settling for each other from the minute you see them interacting. They communicate this just through the tenor of sighs, the fact that they sort of look past each other, and their posture. While training for inclusion in the league, Rosa meets and becomes good friends with an amateur wrestler named Lee who calls herself the The Beautiful Boomerang. Both have had serious troubles with men in the past and they seem like the right kind of weird to be great friends. Watching them train together, getting the hang of both the form and the showmanship involved in pro wrestling is a delight. Some of the film's biggest joys are watching them have fun getting used to stage combat. "Look mean!" says Annie McGreevy's Lee, almost breaking into laughter. Their laughter is the real thing. And reality, or more pointedly, 'realness' is so much a part of the narrative. Terrible Tommy fights hard, erasing the idea that wrestling is safe which is the opposite of the fun we see Fox's women having training with each other. Conversely Rosa's boyfriend is the first of many people to tell Rosa that they think wrestling's fake or staged. "No, It's not fake. It's magic. It's a show." She says with a frown and the ice around my heart melts. There's nothing fake about wrestling to her, and there's certainly nothing fake about Rosa.

One day Lee goes a little too far and suggests that they be more than friends. Here was where the movie had my full attention. Rosa loves this girl as a friend and it breaks her heart to have to turn down her advances, but she's clearly been fucked around too many times to ever be dishonest about her feelings again. Lee and Rosa want the best for each other and can't lie. There's real sadness watching Rosa first stop Lee's hand caressing her face (she's clearly never been hit on by a woman, let alone someone she's so close with) and then when she leaves both her home and her boyfriend behind when she heads out west. Below The Belt isn't at all about wrestling, of course, but I was wondering how it was going to sustain the mood minus this most interesting dynamic. The film finds its feet once we meet the other women under Bobby Fox's tutelage. The four women she joins up with come in (something like literally) every shape and size, and could have handily rounded out the cast of Desperate Living. They're all awesome characters but Shirley Stoler, looking a shade away from Divine, takes the cake as plus-sized, gun-toting Trish. When these girls take Rosa in we know she's in capable hands for the first time in quite a while. Below The Belt settles into a calmingly staccato groove observing these girls on the road, telling jokes, terrorizing gas station attendants and getting into wrecks. It's here that Rosa realizes she can take control of her life and start pursuing a man worth her time, someone who appreciates her, who is just as realistically observed and reserved a character as she is.

Robert Fowler never directed another movie and I don't know a thing about him except that if he'd kept going I have little doubt he'd have been as important a voice as Hal Ashby, Michael Ritchie or Bob Rafelson; he definitely had a more coherent vision than Dennis Hopper or Henry Jaglom. He ably captures a world that seems to demand to be anonymous, shining a spotlight on characters that other directors wouldn't touch. Even the women in Aldrich's film are striking blondes. It's only when the girls in Below The Belt put their costumes on that they become worthy of conventional attention, but we've known that all along. They become part of a show and resist the personalization Fowler has already dressed them in. They almost look wrong in their leotards and accessories. Wrestling is a sport of outsized heroes and villains and Fowler had to contend not only with that, but the disgraceful history of the culture of women wrestlers. Look at a movie like Racket Girls, which is propelled by a grotesque fetishization and possesses production values and a level of craft a step below pornography. It gives women's wrestling a bad name and it wasn't exactly the world cup to begin with. Fowler couldn't have picked a sport culture that interested American audiences less, despite it being among the most american phenomena I've ever seen. Not only does he make the sport work on its own terms, he was among the first filmmakers to make you root for a win in the big climactic match in New Hollywood grammar. He takes the same approach to his characters. He treats even the craziest, surliest side characters with the utmost respect. I haven't even mentioned the subplot about the domestic trouble facing Verne Vavoom (Sierra Pecheur) and her husband Joe, a fellow wrestler, which is splendidly tragic and gets one of the most amazing payoffs I've ever seen. The film would be worth it to hear Verne scream as her husband threatens to drive off without her. If what they have isn't love I don't know what is. Tellingly, his last words to her are "It's been real." They talk about home a fair amount, but the only definition they can come up with is that it's wherever they can be alone. Their love. That's real and the rest is fake. After that moment Rosa has to find out what's real for her.

In sheerly aesthetic terms there isn't a big shift between the world of waitressing and that of tossing people around a mat in front of hundreds of people. Unlike most films about wrestling, boxing or really any sport, the outfits and settings don't get progressively more glamorous. Fowler has to rely exclusively on the nuts and bolts of living the dream. Rosa has nothing but the roar of the crowd and a gut feeling to prove she's a winner and Fowler has to find inventive ways of rendering her slowly developing self-respect. You grow with her and if you want her to achieve her goal, it's got nothing to do with the thought of beating Terrible Tommy and everything to do with self-worth. Watching Rosa step into the ring by herself hours before the big fight, imagining the audience cheering for her in the empty arena, we know she's found herself. Below the Belt invites you into an ugly, harsh world (and boy oh boy it doesn't get uglier than the soundtrack to this film) and makes you appreciate what it means to be a beautiful person; nothing to do with the win and everything to do with how you feel about it.

My Favourite Film Number 6

This is part of my effort to write about my 100 favorite films in two pages or less. The new Format looks stellar, no? Shelly did a remarkable job.

The Wild Bunch
by Sam Peckinpah

“I believe in the innocence of Children,” said Sam Peckinpah, one of the most exciting men who ever lived. He was a womanizer, tyrant, alcoholic, bastard, and a film director. His films featured grit, violence and sex to a degree few commercial filmmakers have ever dared. His movies feature true vulgarity and bacchanalia, whether in the form of one of the most narrow-minded depictions of rape ever filmed, or of two men bathing in a vat of wine with three whores, or of Warren Oates pouring tequila on his penis to kill the crabs his prostitute girlfriend has just given him. He was a difficult man, but one with vision and guts. While others moved in progressive directions, leaving ordinary themes behind for more complex ones, some opted to ignore the change in the times and keep making the same manner of film they always had. Peckinpah decided to breathe life into a genre that nearly everyone had forgotten about. The biggest difference between his and most other westerns is simply in the way he fills the background. Shot on location with real Mexican people, magnificent costume and production design, his films brim with vitality even when nothing happens. His films have a naturalistic quality in their backgrounds that even the greatest of westerns lack. Lucien Ballard’s cinematography helped, of course, in bringing a new Mise-en-scene to a dying breed of film. Things move freely and wildly in Peckinpah films and Ballard’s camera caught it all magnificently (though it is impressive to watch the Director’s cut that has been shown in theatres in recent years, it hasn’t been digitally remastered and so the genius of Ballard’s cinematography goes somewhat unnoticed). His attitude toward children played a crucial role in this, his crowning moment as an artist, and it differs greatly from that of his many heroes and predecessors – Rene Clement, Vittorio De Sica, Carol Reed, Frank Capra, Robert Wise – in that he sees their innocence as something that allows them the greatest potential. They do not see their behavior as wrong and so they do what they feel is right, what gives them greatest pleasure. They act violently toward nature, respect what they please and act out of this sense of respect. Now who they respect is another matter entirely, as they get to choose who they feel responsibility towards; themselves or those with the power to reward them. The only film that really captures every facet of Sam Peckinpah’s beliefs, the one that changed his life, gave his career it’s direction and altered the lives of many, many people is The Wild Bunch.

Sam Peckinpah was an outsider to the world of film; his views on plot structure and his steadfast refusal to compromise had nearly succeeded in taking his one creative output away from him. When Hollywood recognized once again the magnitude of Peckinpah’s creative genius, the first shot they gave him was all he needed and it fit him like a glove. Westerns until the mid 1960s had always basically followed certain archetypes (Anthony Mann’s films obviously prove the exception, ditto Johnny Guitar). The element of westerns which had yet to be rewritten was that the lead characters always apostrophize about their ideals and what it is they’d be willing to die for; Peckinpah’s triumphant return to the big screen unflinchingly shows what it looks like when men decide to walk the walk. They do so in one of the screen’s most electrifying gun battles ever filmed. The scene, famous for it’s behind-the-scenes stores of limited extras and uniforms, makes perfect use of Sam’s feverish editing and his love of the squib (fake blood spurting from bullet-sized pockets hidden in clothing). The opening and closing orgy of gun violence will always be as exciting to me as the first time I saw it. On the big screen, it’s the stuff of dreams; so perfect is the montage of both gunfights that you’re unknowingly on the edge of your seat when they’re through.

The story concerns a gang of aging criminals around the time of the Mexican Revolution in 1913, led by Pike Bishop (William Holden in what has to be the finest performance of his career). The bunch, Dutch (Ernest Borgnine, his finest hour), Brother’s Lyle (Warren Oates, who steals many of his scenes with his demented anger) & Tector Gorch (Ben Johnson, who despite being covered in filth can’t help but look elegant), feisty new recruit Angel (Jaime Sanchez, who must be one of the first Mexicans to portray a heroic figure in an American produced film), and horse watcher Freddie Sykes (Edmond O’Brien, who should have won an Oscar for his Walter Huston act) drifts around Mexico contemplating their next move; they’re wanted by the law and by a posse of inept bounty hunters hired by the railroad headed by Pike’s former partner Deke Thornton (Robert Ryan in one of his best roles). It was Pike’s arrogance that landed Deke in Prison and now the railroad has bribed him with freedom into tracking his old friend down. Thornton and Pike understand that things can’t change between the two of them, and that they’ll never stop their game of cat and mouse. This dynamic is not uncommon in many westerns, but excluding Sam Fuller’s I Shot Jesse James, the feeling of romantic tension between these two men is unique to the genre. Indeed it is the shock in William Holden’s face when he thinks Thornton has been killed in the demolition of a bridge and the hangdog look on Robert Ryan’s face after the final showdown has claimed his erstwhile accomplice’s life that cements the other half of the story’s dynamism. If these men didn’t care, neither would we. Lawmen chase bad guys because they have to; Thornton and Bishop have reason enough to get quit of the whole business, but it would almost certainly mean abandoning the other, which neither can face.

The two men share the same haunted flashbacks, but it’s the memory of the past that keeps them going. In fact it’s the memory of the past that keeps everyone in the film’s universe going. The story takes Pike and his men from a botched railroad heist into Mexico where they agree to steal guns for a General combating Pancho Villa. During a brief stop in Angel’s village before meeting the General, Pike and Sykes talk to an old man who helps the revolutionaries fight local oppressors who wish to steal their land. Watching Tector & Lyle dancing and acting foolishly, Pike says how funny it is that grown men can act like children when they want to. The old man tells him that even the worst men pine for their childhood. The end of the road is not too far for Pike and he knows it, so even if it isn’t childhood he wants, he’d take his earlier years, when he could get on his horse without stumbling that he wishes to relive. He could act as ruthlessly as the children who torment scorpions with fire ants that they pass on their way to rob the railroad. Sykes, Deke, Pike, and Dutch all see that their tenure as gunmen is coming to a rapid close, the only question is “how’s it going to end?” In a traditional western, the ending would look something like the departure from Angel’s village (a scene Peckinpah improvised): everyone gathered in the main drag to see these men off.
In Peckinpah’s world of absolution, they must give their lives for the one thing they have left to believe them. Interestingly, it wasn’t until seeing this movie on the big screen that I thought about what gunfighters must think of death. When each member of the gang is laid down, they seem to come to rest more than being torn asunder. Is death so unyielding a possibility that when it finally arrives is it simply the anticipated arrival of an inevitable step (is it welcome?). These men don’t seem too bothered about their own deaths; it’s the falling of their brothers in arms that gets them.

When Angel decides to steal a box of the General’s guns so his people can defend themselves, he is caught and punished by the general. With Thornton and the army waiting for them, they have little reason to leave town, but with Angel being towed behind the General’s car through the town square, staying feels just as bad. The scriptwriter Waylon Green commented that Pike’s last words to his men before they stroll, bold as brass through town, their guns in their arms, to go meet the General, were not enough. Pike simply barks as he has throughout the entire film “Let’s go,” and the message is clear; everything he says is completely unambiguous whether his words are makes no difference. Peckinpah, as his daughter Sharon has noted, clearly modeled Pike Bishop on himself, mannerisms and all. So what we have is a man searching for a time when he could be as bold and free as he could be, as a child is. The Wild Bunch was simply a movie with great dialogue and two of the best gunfights in history until very recently. There’s a recording of Peckinpah where he talks about something he used to do as a child. He was infatuated with Tennyson’s poem “Charge of the Light Brigade” and so memorized it and then started acting it out. Soon he had as many as 50 kids involved in helping him recreate the scene from Tennyson’s work. On this recording beautifully sums up his filmmaking career in so concise and pure a way that I was floored by his simplicity: “I guess I’m still doing that.” Never before had The Wild Bunch or it’s creator seemed so human. I was reminded of Arthur Lee of the band Love who received a premonition that he would die at age 26 and so strove to make his next (and presumably last) record show the contents of his soul; the result, Forever Changes, is one of the greatest records of all time, but it’s not without it’s dark and strange moments. Sam Peckinpah was, unbeknownst to audiences, baring his soul to the world. Pike’s dilemma was his dilemma: where do you go when the world has refused you? When all you want is to be able to be free again? He was a monster and mad scientist on the set because he needed the movie to be perfect, he needed the world to see what lay within him and could not be hemmed in by a script. When The Wild Bunch wrapped, Sam left his technicians, found an empty corner in the shooting space and wept like a child. This was it, his one chance and it’s perfect. It says everything Sam Peckinpah could not. He drank himself to death in 1984 leaving a lot of friends, a lot of enemies, a host of memories good and bad, and at least one legendary film behind.