Cockfighter

Frank Mansfield fights gamecocks. Years ago he made himself a promise: not to speak a word until he wins the Cockfighter of the Year medal. He does not speak for the length of the film. He moves through the southern states, arranges fights, loses, sells everything he has, and starts again. Monte Hellman directs, Roger Corman produces. Warren Oates plays Frank. The source is Charles Willeford's novel, and Willeford wrote the screenplay. The governing constraint is the silence. Oates has almost no dialogue; only a voiceover carries his thoughts. All the acting runs through the face and the body, and it counts among the most praised things he did. Corman expected it to work commercially and it did not. It was reissued several times under different titles with different posters and none of it helped. Along with Two-Lane Blacktop it became another commercial failure attached to Hellman's name. The film contains real cockfighting. That is the thing that makes it unwatchable for many now, and it was criticised for it at the time as well. Who it is for: viewers curious about seventies American independent cinema and about Warren Oates. Who it is not for: real violence against animals is shown, which rules the film out for many people before anything else.