The Champ (Franco Zeffirelli, 1979): USA

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.  Viewed on DVD. 

There are a few instances where a remake has succeeded and is as good or better than the original.  One example is the 1949 remake (and endearing classic) Little Women, directed by Mervyn LeRoy, which far surpasses the entertaining 1933 George Cukor original.

The Champ (played by Jon Voight) is a former boxing champ turned horse trainer.  He is a single father struggling to raise his young son TJ (played by Ricky Shroder), but barely scraping by.  After winning a horse during a drinking/gambling binge, Champ enters the horse in a race and suddenly Annie (Faye Dunaway)–ex-wife to Champ and mother to TJ.–appears on the scene.  

Annie wants to be active in TJ’s life again, even though she abandoned Champ and him seven years prior.  Although under questionable conditions, Champ has done a pretty amazing job raising TJ, and Annie desires to be close to her darling little boy.

The boxing in this story is secondary, and does not enter the plot until more than halfway through the film.  Although the story differs slightly from the entertaining 1931 King Vidor original,  the heartfelt emotion is so much stronger in this remake.  Faye Dunaway brings her own instinctive style and effectively under-plays Annie’s agonizing heartstrings towards her boy.  The heart-rending scene at the film’s end earned nine year old Ricky Shroder a Golden Globe award.