The squalor, shoddy glamour and horror surrounding the noble art of boxing all emerge in sharply-observed portrait of professional fighting The Square Ring. This composite picture of the lives and careers of a group of fighters chronicles the events of one evening in and around Adam’s Boxing Stadium – an evening which ends in tragedy for some of those on the bill.
The majority of the action takes place in the fighter’s dressing room with only the occasional foray into the ring, so it never moves far away from it’s stage origins but it’s a tight little movie nonetheless. Amongst the cast is a very young Joan Collins. At the time she was still in her teens and had recently married co-star Maxwell Reed who was 30 years her senior.
production details
UK / Rank / 83 minutes / 1953
Directors: Basil Dearden, Michael Relph
cast
Sid James as Adams
Jack Warner as Danny Felton
Robert Beatty as Jim ‘Kid’ Curtis
Bill Owen as Happy Burns
Maxwell Reed as Rick Martell
Joan Collins as Frankie
Kay Kendall as Eve
Bernadette O’Farrell as Peg Curtis
George Rose as Whitey Johnson
Bill Travers as Rowdie Rawlings
Ronald Lewis as Eddie Lloyd
Joan Sims as Bunty
Alfie Bass as Frank Forbes