>>REVIEW
RING OF FIRE: THE EMILE GRIFFITH STORY
Directed by Dan Klores and Ron Berger
Anchor Bay, 2005
"Boxing is a sport of the poor, set up to entertain the middle-class."
These words by journalist Pete Hamill in the documentary Ring Of Fire: The Emile Griffith Story encapsulate the brutal world of professional boxing as it existed in the America of the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s.
Ring of Fire, directed by Dan Klores and Ron Berger, follows the rising star of a young black man working in the garment district of 1950s New York City. One fateful day, he removed his shirt and his boss was amazed at the 40-inch chest, 29-inch waist physique of the young man and believed he would have a future as a fighter. Emile Griffith has no interest in fighting, but was a compliant personality and only 16 years old.
By all accounts he was a sensitive, gentle, loving, naive soul trying to better himself in the rough and tumble world of New York. He did not want to be a fighter – he was happy to design women’s hats. But he had a talent, and that talent was boxing and a swift left hook.
In 1961 he stepped into the ring against an aggressive young Cuban named Bennie "Kid" Paget for the world welterweight championship – the young designer won the match.
A second match between Griffith and Paget was set for a few months later. Paget had started a campaign of intimidation and psyching out his nemesis, calling him maricon, Spanish for not just "homosexual," but "faggot." In the macho world of boxing and Latino and black street culture, this was the ultimate insult. It could ruin a man’s reputation, his career and his life.
The early part of the nationally televised fight was uneventful, but two minutes and nine seconds into the 12th round, Griffith landed a hay-maker on Paget, whose head snapped back. Griffith kept pounding and hitting– some say he laid down 17 punches in five seconds, others said it was 23 or 25. No one is sure which punch killed Paget. After lying in a coma for 10 days, Paget died of a subdural hemorrhage. His ghost would haunt Griffith for the next 40 years.
This documentary evokes the reality of America during the years preceding and following the Civil Rights movement – what boxing meant to poor, ghettoized black and Latino youth, but more importantly it examines a failed life, a fall from grace, the after-effects of not only the physical damage inflicted by pounding men in the head over and over, but the emotional and even psychic damage.
Griffith, once so full of hope and promise, so vital, so personable, ends up a broken and broke brain-damaged old man hanging out in the gay and drag bars of Lower Manhattan. Paget, a promising young Cuban boxer was beaten to death in front of millions, his life draining out over the canvas of a sweaty boxing ring. Paget’s son never knew his father, grows up missing him and his wife is condemned to spending the rest of her life without her great love. A nation horrified for a brief flash in time, a sport that never recovered from the scandal, racism, classism, homophobia, greed, bitterness and regret – it’s all here, beautifully filmed and touchingly told.
The background story here isn’t about a closeted gay man driven to kill his tormentor. In fact, the knowledge of whether Griffith is gay never really gains any prominence until later in the film, and then is treated as incidental, a sidebar to history. This is as it should be.
The story is more properly about a promising but naive young man who was manipulated into becoming one of the greatest boxing stars of the 20th century and then abandoned to live with his demons. |
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