The Set Up by Joseph Moncure March is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and a fabulous work of art – you find multiple notes on films from The NYT 1,000 list on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

The Set Up by Joseph Moncure March is one of The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and a fabulous work of art – you find multiple notes on films from The NYT 1,000 list on my blog https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html

 

 

10 out of 10

 

The Set Up is a splendid, if tragic film

 

Robert Ryan makes the most contribution to the tremendous success of this chef d’oeuvre – albeit the whole team matters and I think I will get back to this further down – as the thirty-five years old boxer Bill 'Stoker' Thompson, an unlikely hero, perhaps even a role model (if we leave the brutal sport aside) reminding us of Raging Bull

He was a phenomenal, outstanding thespian, one of the other major magnum opera in which he has a leading role is The Wild Bunch https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2026/01/note-on-wild-bunch.html also on The New York Times’ Best 1,000 Movies Ever Made and on my personal list of 200 favorites, marvelous, if bloody

 

Robert Ryan was also a civil rights campaigner, he kept his real name – Kirk Douglas, Tony Curtis and many others felt they had to change identity, because of antisemitism - Robert Bushnell Ryan ‘served in the United States Marines as a drill sergeant, winning a boxing championship,’ and this ads authenticity to his role as a boxer

Bill Stoker Thompson has had a bad streak, as his wife Julie Thompson, portrayed with exceptional talent by Audrey Totter, at thirty-five, he is old in his métier – though in these days, due to progress in medicine and science, many fight in their forties, or at least that is my impression – and he has to face a much younger opponent

 

Gus is his manager and Tiny his man in the corner, the former has talked to some hoodlum representing a mobster, Little Boy, and he has agreed to lose the next fight, getting money from the gangster, sharing some with Tiny, but keeping the boxer out of the loop, on the assumption that he has lost so much, there is no need to do anything

Tiny wants Bill Stoker to know, but Gus does not want to share his dirty money, meanwhile, Julie Thompson is horrified by the idea that her husband keeps getting those terrible blows – spectators in the arena are shown with extreme accuracy enjoying the spectacle of pain – and she refuses to come to the fight

 

The fighter wants her there, he keeps looking to the window of their room, which is near the arena, to see if the lights are switched off, for that would be the sign she is coming to see him, except when she comes out, she approached the entrance, but cannot step in: it will be a gruesome show, many blows, blood and suffering

Yes, there is the athletic aspect of it, but science has shown that getting hit in the head is damaging, in American football and elsewhere, ergo the helmets and movies like Trauma, which try to highlight the risks dangers, in boxing, they wear protection, at least in the Olympics, although not in professional, high stakes battles…

 

https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/03/casino-written-by-nicholas-pileggi-and.html

 

 Now for my standard closing of the note with a question, and invitation – I am on Goodreads as Realini Ionescu, at least for the moment, if I keep on expressing my views on Orange Woland aka TACO, it may be a short-lived presence

Also, maybe you have a good idea on how we could make more than a million dollars with this https://realinibarzoi.blogspot.com/2025/09/do-you-have-any-feedback.html – as it is, this is a unique technique, which we could promote, sell, open the Oscars show with or something and then make lots of money together, if you have the how, I have the product, I just do not know how to get the benefits from it, other than the exercise per se

 

 There is also the small matter of working for AT&T – this huge company asked me to be its Representative for Romania and Bulgaria, on the Calling Card side, which meant sailing into the Black Sea wo meet the US Navy ships, travelling to Sofia, a lot of activity, using my mother’s two bedrooms flat as office and warehouse, all for the grand total of $250, raised after a lot of persuasion to the staggering $400…with retirement ahead, there are no benefits, nothing…it is a longer story, but if you can help get the mastodont to pay some dues, or have an idea how it can happen, let me know

 

As for my role in the Revolution that killed Ceausescu, a smaller Mao, there it is http://realini.blogspot.com/2022/03/realini-in-newsweek-participant-in.html

 

Some favorite quotes from To The Hermitage and other works

 

‘Fiction is infinitely preferable to real life...As long as you avoid the books of Kafka or Beckett, the everlasting plot of fiction has fewer futile experiences than the careless plot of reality...Fiction's people are fuller, deeper, cleverer, more moving than those in real life…Its actions are more intricate, illuminating, noble, profound…There are many more dramas, climaxes, romantic fulfillment, twists, turns, gratified resolutions…Unlike reality, all of this you can experience without leaving the house or even getting out of bed…What's more, books are a form of intelligent human greatness, as stories are a higher order of sense…As random life is to destiny, so stories are to great authors, who provided us with some of the highest pleasures and the most wonderful mystifications we can find…Few stories are greater than Anna Karenina, that wise epic by an often foolish author…’