The Battle of the Century - 1921
ABOUT THE FILM : The Battle of the Century
British Film InstituteYear: 1921
Beginning of July 1921. The Thirty Acres stadium in Jersey City, built specially for the occasion, was filling up at a phenomenal speed. In the centre of the ring, two boxers ready to fight for the world heavyweight championship title. Jack Dempsey, American title holder and Georges Carpentier, French war hero and hardened challenger were going to face one another in front of an audience of spectators and journalists in what would become the 'fight of the century'.
Nationality: American
Actors: Jack Dempsey, Georges Carpentier
Length: 34' 27"
Genre: documentary
Sound: silent with soundtrack
Original elements: black & white
Composer: Antonio Coppola (2009)
Original language: English
A BRIEF HISTORY : The Battle of the Century
Described by boxing enthusiasts as the 'fight of the century', the match opposing Jack Dempsey and Georges Carpentier permanently made the sport a mass leisure activity at the beginning of the roaring twenties.
A few years after the end of the First World War, enthusiasm seemed to be reborn and the 1920's witnessed a popular desire to have fun and forget. Professional sport thus became the privileged refuge for a public lacking in distraction and boxing imposed itself as entertainment that brought people together.
Tex Rickard, one of the most popular promoters of sporting events at this time was the first to give such a big media coverage for his favourite sport, boxing. With the help of Julius Hopp, then director of the famous Madison Square Garden in New York, he got through a Herculean task to allow the match to be broadcast to the masses. During the building of the stadium, towers were specially designed to accommodate the cameramen. On site, there were no less than 300 journalists from the four corners of the earth and 85 telegraph operators who broadcast the information live. More than 70 towns from the east coast were equipped with receivers, installed in theatres, hotels and bars. In addition to the 80,000 spectators who were in the stadium nearly 300,000 people followed the fight throughout the country.
In the version of the film presented here (the longest available material), we witness the two boxers training in the first half. The sequences are edited alongside one another to avoid any favouritism. In the second half the spectator could follow the entire match, up to Carpentier's defeat.
This fight was the forerunner of the media coverage of sporting events as in the year that followed, the year 1922, there was a boom in the purchase of radio sets that had never been seen before. This 'fight of the century' also marked the beginning of a new form of sport. Journalist Frank Deford later said of Tex Rickard that he was "the first to understand the potential of the star system" in the universe of sporting competition. The match between Dempsey and Carpentier earned its organisers more than 1.7 million dollars.
The original music for this film was composed by Antonio Coppola in 2009.
