SPECIAL SCREENING – Frears in the ring with Mohamed Ali

It’s not the first time he has been the protagonist of a fictional film. Ali, The Greatest, Requiem for a Heavyweight, the career of the mythic Cassius Clay alias Mohamed Ali has inspired generations of film makers since the 1960s. Stephen Frears was drawn to put one episode in particular from the boxer’s life into closer focus: his refusal to fight with the US army in Vietnam, an episode recounted in: Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight.

Photo from the Film © RR

“Shoot them for what? They never called me nigger.” Mohamed Ali will not go to war, whatever the authorities say. At the time, this decision divided America: the boxer would not join the US army because of his ideological beliefs – the boxer who was engaged in the struggle against racial segregation had just converted to Islam.

Mohamed Ali did not come out of this fight without paying a price. Tried in court, he was condemned to five years in jail and fined $10,000 dollars. He appealed this decision, and was not incarcerated, but his boxing licence was suspended and he was stripped of his world heavyweight champion title. His career was on hold for thee years.

Stephen Frears sees this refusal as the boxer’s greatest fight. The director, who has been to Cannes before in Competition with Prick Up Your Ears (1987) and The Van (1996) and Out of Competition in 2009 with Tamara Drewe, looks back on the decade that followed this refusal. Muhammad Ali’s Greatest Fight retraces the thorny court case that mobilised the Supreme Court, the highest judiciary body in America. The film will soon be aired on HBO in the United States.

Tarik Khaldi

SCREENING
Wednesday 22 May / Salle du Soixantième / 5 pm
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