The movie
“Cinderella Man” is about a man living during the Great Depression and his main
goal during this time is to make a living to provide for his family’s
needs. When given the 2 prompts for this
essay that I could either agree or disagree with either one, my immediate
thought was, “I agree with both.” I
couldn’t agree or disagree with just one.
I agree that someone watching this movie can learn a lot about life
during the Great Depression, but I also agree that this movie does an amazing
job of telling the viewer about how different people lived during the time
period and telling stories about their lives, one in particular being the
ultimate ‘Cinderella Man,’ or James Braddock.
The main
character in the movie is James Braddock.
He is a professional boxer and he is good at what he does. But after an awful losing streak and a long
time period of not making much money, he is fired and fortunately gets a job
working at the docks. Braddock is the
perfect example of anyone living during the Great Depression. The movie shows him as a hard working man,
but also a family man. All he really
wants to do is give his family what they want and need, but just like everyone
else, it was hard to do that in this time.
Most people, especially men with families, wanted this. Their main goal was to keep their family safe
and provide for them. Once he stopped
fighting, he was very lucky to get a job working at the docks. Many people were not that fortunate. “Cinderella Man” does a great job showing the
events of Braddock’s life, including him working at the docks, and then again
him as a boxer, making more money.
The movie
not only does a great job of showing the emotions of the main characters, but
also of the people that are seen walking through the streets. When watching the film, I noticed that not
once did anyone walking down the streets or anyone in a store or anything of
the sort, look happy. They were never
smiling. The only time that we see
anyone smiling or having fun is when they are at the boxing match. After doing some research on this, I
discovered that during the Great Depression, hardly any people were happy,
which is understandable, and that the only times that they were happy was when
they went to sporting events such as boxing in this movie.
Of course,
this is the Great Depression that we are talking about, so I can assuredly say
that almost everyone, if not everyone, was living below the poverty line. There were tons of people who lost their jobs
during this period and very many of them were unable to find new ones. The movie shows an actual newspaper from the
Great Depression that headlines ’15 million Americans Jobless.’ These people had no other source of income
until they could find another job. For
the people who had no way of making their own money, there was a thing called
‘relief money’ that was given to the individual or family for them to buy their
basic necessities. Once they were able
to make money, the family would have to pay the money back. The movie does a great job of showing how
thankful Braddock and other people were for this system. It shows Braddock repaying all of the money
that he had received as soon as he is able to. Some people were not able to repay it all until the Depression was finally over, but they were so thankful for the money and the movie shows that.
“Cinderella
Man” does a wonderful job of portraying life during the Great Depression
and telling the “fairy tale” of one individual.
Through this one man’s life story, we can compare how different other
people’s lives were. I believe that
Braddock was probably wealthier than most of the people during the 1930s. Because of his profession in boxing, he made
more money than a lot of the people living in New Jersey. While we see this “rich” man’s life, we also
see the people around him and how they live, giving the person watching an
all-around view of what life would have been like for all different kinds of
people, no matter what race or income level.
Sources:
IMBD - Cinderella Man
Wikipedia - Cinderella Man
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