Soaking it in
I wanted to experience this with family and friends, instead I listened to these momentous events alone, on the radio, in my minivan.
The 2005 film, Cinderella Man, tells the true story of boxing champion James J. Braddock, the Pride of New Jersey.
Braddock, played by Russell Crowe, was a promising boxer who was forced by injury to leave boxing and take work as a longshoreman during the Depression to support his family. He eventually makes it back into the ring and becomes an unlikely contender for the heavyweight title.
It’s a moving story about courage and perseverance and family and honor. It’s also a boxing movie, so it’s about stout men trying to knock one another out cold. And the hero is an underdog, blue-collar, Irish Catholic family man who has to fight an intimidating German in the late 1930s.
Like I said, it’s a really good movie.
In the climactic scene, as Braddock battles Max Baer for the title, the film ramps up the drama by cutting away from the fight in Madison Square Garden to show Braddock’s friends, family, neighbors, and fellow parishioners listening to the title bout on the radio. Watching the action is thrilling; but by cutting away from the fight, we, the viewers, are forced to listen to the radio broadcast just like Braddock's friends and family. Not being able to see all the action on screen, we strain our ears to the thin staccato of the radio announcer calling the fight.
The suspense is almost unbearable.
The year Cinderella Man was released, Pope St. John Paul II died. I was in my mid-twenties at the time; John Paul II had been the only pope I had ever known. His death, the papal funeral, the interregnum, the Conclave, and the announcement of a new pope – all of this was new to me. I remember the thrill of hearing, though I’m not sure from whom, that there was white smoke.
Everyone rushed to get in front of the television. I don’t recall anyone turning on a radio.