Cinderella Man

  I agree with the statement "The movie, Cinderella Man, takes place during the Great Depression, but it ultimately does a much better job of telling us an emotional and inspirational "fairy tale" about one man than it does exposing the audiences to the facts bout the Great Depression as it was experienced by most Americans. As I read up on the historical accuracy of the film, I find that while the facts are more or less true, but the characters development is exaggerated.

   In most films there is a 'good guy' that everyone wants to succeed in life, and a 'bad guy' that everyone wants to ultimately fail at their  mission which is usually to cause the 'good guy' problems and to get in their way to their goal. In Cinderella Man's case, the 'good guy' is James Braddock and the 'bad guy' is Max Baer. The goal of Braddock is to keep his family afloat in the hard times of the great depression through the means of boxing for money.

  Through my research, I found that the most inaccuracies of the film lie with the character Max Baer. The first fact being that he had killed two men in the rink before. In real life he had only killed one man before. In the movie, the Baer seemed proud of the death while in real life, he was tormented by it for the rest of his life. Baer came off in the film as a ruthless, villain. There is a scene where Braddock is having a nice dinner with his wife and manager, and Baer walks in. Braddock goes to talk to Baer and Baer is rude and makes a pass at Braddocks wife. There is no documentation that this event ever occurred. The scene was only there to further demonize Baer as a character. In the film he did not care about the torment he caused others, and his only real purpose was to pose a threat to the underdog, Braddock.

  When there is such a clear 'bad guy' in a movie, it makes it easier for the audience to root for someone and to hate someone else. In reality, there was no 'bad guy'. There was just two men trying to get by in the midst of  The Great Depression. The whole point of the fight to both Braddock and Baer, was too earn money so they could keep food on the table.

  Ultimately It makes me upset that they demonize the character of Max Baer to make the film more like a fairytale. The whole point of having a 'bad guy' is to make the movie more dramatic and emotional, while in the real Great Depression, everyone was just trying to survive through an economic disaster.





 "The Biggest Thing 'Cinderella Man' Got Wrong - Boxing News." BoxingScenecom RSS. N.p., n.d. Web. 07 May 2015.