The Champ - Assessment

Assessment

The film, along with Beery's role in Min and Bill, transformed Beery from aging character actor to a verified star. It also made nine-year-old Jackie Cooper the first child star of the 1930s, an era noted for its numerous, popular child actors.

At the time the movie was released, critics criticized the film's lack of originality. For example, The New York Times declared that "something more novel and subtle" was needed, although it also praised Beery's acting. Variety, too, very much liked Beery in the film, noting that he delivered a "studied, adult" performance. Time called the film repetitive, blasted Cooper for sniveling, and accused director King Vidor of laying "on pathos with a steam-shovel." Nonetheless, Time praised the movie, declaring it "Utterly false and thoroughly convincing..." Many critics cited the "special chemistry" between Beery and Cooper, which led the two actors to be paired again numerous times. Cooper and Beery had no such chemistry off-screen. "He always made me feel uncomfortable," Cooper said, and declared that Beery treated him like an "unkept dog". Despite the film's kitschiness and melodrama, critics today still highly praise The Champ.

The Champ has been described as an inverted women's film, because men in the film are not generally depicted at the top of the socio-economic ladder but are shown as a primary childcare provider. The famous final scene, in which the camera is thrust into Jackie Cooper's weeping face, has been compared to similar aggressive and intrusive camera work in classic motion pictures such as Liebelei (Max Ophüls, dir.; 1933) and Broken Blossoms (D.W. Griffith, dir.; 1919), and the films of Roberto Rossellini.

The Champ has had significant cultural effect. A number of motion pictures in the 1930s, some of them even starring Wallace Beery, repeated the basic story about a man surrendering to drink and redeemed by the love of his long-suffering son. Film critic Judith Crist has argued that almost any film pairing an adult actor alongside a child actor must be compared to The Champ in terms of the chemistry between the actors and the effectiveness of the film. The film had an immediate effect on world cinema as well. The Champ is considered one source film which inspired Yasujiro Ozu's classic Japanese film, Passing Fancy (Dekigokoro, 1933). The film was, in part, the inspiration for the father and son in the Berenstain Bears books.