Word: zeffirelli
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...fans. The film opens with suitably celestial music as the star of Bethlehem scoots in from the galactic end-zone. Three camels with robed riders poke their way across a sea of sand-dunes, towards a shabby huddle of huts and mangers. It could all be right out of Zeffirelli's "Jesus of Nazareth" down to the last sunbeam...
Directed by Franco Zeffirelli...
...should. When the great director King Vidor made The Champ in 1931, he created a four-handkerchief corker; a fine cast (Wallace Beery, the young Jackie Cooper, Irene Rich) and Vidor's emotional restraint prevented a sugary story from caramelizing. This remake, directed by Franco Zeffirelli (Romeo and Juliet), is another matter entirely. By miscasting all three major roles, adding 35 minutes to the original film's running time and reaching for cheap effects, the director has gilded a lily and then shredded...
...Although Zeffirelli usually has a good eye for sets and atmosphere, even the ambience of The Champ seems bogus. The low-life Florida sporting hangouts frequented by the champ (Jon Voight) and his son (Ricky Schroder) are a tad too pretty; the extras look like a musical comedy chorus. The florid digs of the mother (Faye Dunaway) are so opulent that one expects Astaire and Rogers to appear on a staircase. Such decorative exaggeration is paralleled by Zeffirelli's treatment of his story. Each time The Champ hits a melodramatic climax, which is roughly once every five minutes...
...instead of succumbing to tuberculosis, he develops amnesia. There the parallels end. The rest of the movie carries him through an idyllic romance with a flower-child of the neighborhood--a courtship full of walks through the fields and accompanied by soupy music, much like the middle third of Zeffirelli's Romeo and Juliet. Just as they consumate their love, however, he recovers his memory. He abandons her for his celibate priesthood and she dies of a broken heart. In the Emile Zola novel on which the film is based, this ending was clearly intended as an anti-clerical attack...