A Film Canon

Gentleman Jim stands in relation to Errol Flynn as Now, Voyager does to Bette Davis, hypothesising a narrative to account for his particular brand of charisma, and identifying him with a late nineteenth-century reconfiguration of masculinity from machismo to dandyism. As heavyweight champion James Corbett, Flynn reforms the game from a hand-sport to a foot-sport, such that it takes outgoing champion John L. Sullivan (Buck Ware) nineteen rounds to even lay a hand on him, and renders boxing continuous with dancing (the first fight is followed by a ball, the last preceded by a jig). At the same time, Corbett's contribution to "the scientific art of self-defence" involves the promulgation of a code of conduct that is both aesthetic and ethical, and ensures that those dimensions always supervene the more basic narrative, or voyeuristic, pleasures of the fight sequences, producing a character study, or even a period piece, rather than a sporting film per se. Hence the curiously redundant, predictable quality of those fights, as well as the attention paid to Corbett's theatrical career which, along with Flynn's markedly tongue-in- cheek performance, suggests that Walsh's real project is a study in good-natured, self- aware celebrity: "A swellhead is a guy who thinks he's good and isn't. Get the difference?"