Boxing is a popular sport in Britain, but it is one which the British cinema tends to ignore. There have been plenty of American boxing films- there have been nine entries in the "Rocky" franchise alone- but "The Square Ring" is about the only British one I can think of. The action takes place over a single evening at a boxing stadium, where six bouts are taking place. There are six storylines, each concentrating on one of the boxers taking part in each bout. (We do not learn very much about their opponents). Uniting the film is the figure of Danny Felton, a former professional boxer himself, who acts as trainer to some of the six.
Between them the six boxers embody just about every cliche known to the boxing movie. There is Jim 'Kid' Curtis, a former champion trying to make a comeback. (Despite his nickname, Kid is at 34 the oldest of the six, too old, it is implied, for the sport. The actor playing him, Robert Beatty, was actually 44 at the time. This was long before George Foreman won a world championship in his mid forties). There is Eddie Lloyd, a young rookie making his professional debut after fighting as an amateur, who becomes disillusioned when he loses to a dirty fighter using illegal tactics which the referee does not spot. Whitey Johnson is a punch-drunk has-been. (Or perhaps, more accurately, a punch-drunk never-was and never-will-be). And Rick Martell is a crooked boxer planning to throw a fight as part of a gambling scam. (Just about every boxing film from this period seemed to make use of this particular storyline; it even surfaces in "On the Waterfront". If real-life boxing had been as corrupt as the movies tried to make out, bookmakers would doubtless have refused to offer odds on it).
The film was based on a stage play by the Australian dramatist Ralph Peterson. I haven't seen the play, but I understand that it had an all-male cast. The film-makers decided to add a female element, so we also get to see the wives and girlfriends of some of the boxers (and, in Eddie's case, his mother). Kid is hoping to be reconciled with his estranged wife, but she hates boxing and does not welcome his attempt at a comeback. Rick is played by Maxwell Reed and his girlfriend Frankie by his then real-life wife Joan Collins.
Peterson's play appears to have been a hit in the theatre, but the film was less of a success. From my point of view there are too many different plotlines; it might have been better if the film-makers had concentrated on only two or three. The story, as one contemporary critic pointed out, veers uneasily from comedy to tragedy and back again. Kid Curtis is a genuinely tragic figure, but someone like Whitey Johnson is treated as a figure of fun, when his story should really be nearly as tragic as Kid's. Despite the presence of a few well known faces- a young Collins, Jack Warner, Sid James, Alfie Bass- this is a film which has largely disappeared from view over the last seventy years. It doesn't stand comparison with American boxing films like "Body and Soul", "Champion" or "Raging Bull". 5/10.
