Three Beautiful Things 08-18-2022: Debbie Hits the Road, Boxing and Film Noir: *The Set-Up* (1949), Music in the Park

 1. Debbie decided not to stay any longer in Eugene and called me to say she was on her way to Portland. She arrived, sent me a picture of the exterior of Meagan and Patrick's apartment and she'll decide later when to return to Kellogg.

2. Today's Vizio University curriculum continued my current preoccupation with film noir. The shady, or should I write, shadowy, world of boxing is a perfect subject for the film noir approach to making movies. So, I watched The Set-Up (1949). It's directed by Robert Wise and is about as different from his later, much more famous effort, The Sound of Music as two movies could be. The Set-Up takes place in a dark shadowy section of a place called Paradise City and takes us right into the corruption of this world of small time boxing as we enter a bar that is a gangster hangout, a seedy hotel where the movie's central figure, thirty-five year old washed up boxer, Stoker Thompson (Robert Ryan) and his wife (Audrey Totter) are staying, and into the grimy locker room and training room of the area where the movie's boxing matches take place.

I don't want to give away what happens in the movie, but I will reveal that, like High Noon, it takes place in real time. The movie runs about 70 minutes and so does the beginning, middle, and end of this story. It's beautifully photographed by Milton R. Krasner, whose work with light and shadow gave this movie its purgatorial atmosphere and underscored its conflicts between nobility and corruption.

3. Well, lo and behold, today was Thursday. Today when I drove over to the city park, unlike when I showed up a day early yesterday, people were there, booths were set up, and Carol and Paul and Joy Persoon were making music. Carol and Paul and Joy put together a program of what (I think) they called, "Music Through the Decades" and they sang a variety of standards ranging from "Moon River" to "Ring of Fire" to "Sentimental Journey". 

The music was wonderful, but I have to say that even more pleasing to me was how nicely the park had cooled off and how shaded it was. I went over for about the last hour of music because I didn't want to be out in the heat and I had worried about Carol, Paul, and Joy being out in this hot weather for over two hours performing. Good news! They were fine. I talked with Carol and Joy afterward and they weren't red or flushed and so my concerns came to nothing.