Lou Sandoval, the New Mexico sculptor and Guinness World Record holder for punching a heavy bag for 60 hours, counts Sylvester Stallone as a personal hero.
Sandoval, whose sculptures and drawings reflect his Catholic faith, understands the confluence of pugilism, faith, and art — including film.
Now, as Stallone’s acclaimed 1976 boxing drama, “Rocky,” approaches its 50th Anniversary on Nov. 21, Sandoval confidentially points out that this gritty underdog story is a “uniquely Catholic movie.”
Sandoval, who trained at Brooklyn Cops & Kids Boxing gym in Little Haiti for his Guinness record quest, noted: “The first image in the movie is a picture of Jesus Christ over the boxing ring.”
John Dougherty, a Philadelphia-based film critic for America Magazine, said Sandoval is correct that Stallone’s portrayal of the underdog Rocky Balboa carries deep spiritual overtones.
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“I think the specifics of this guy being Italian American, coming from Philadelphia, already put kind of a Catholic cast on the idea of resurrection,” Dougherty said. “And the Catholic imagery in the movie, of course, you certainly see at the beginning with the athletic club.”
The film opens with bold capital letters that spell “Rocky” scrolling across the screen. The audience is treated to the brief but rousing, brass-infused “Fanfare for Rocky.”
First, the audience sees a portrait of Jesus holding the Eucharist, flanked by the Alpha and Omega motifs.
Below that, an image of Christ is the sign for the “Resurrection AC (Athletic Club).”
But then the scene opens to the grime of Rocky’s world, as he tries to stay on his feet in the boxing ring while an opponent, Spider Rico, pummels his face.
The air is filled with cigarette smoke puffed by bystanders who repeatedly call Rocky a “bum” and disgustedly fling snack wrappers into the ring. Between rounds, even his cornerman insults him.
“Ya movin’ like a bum,” he tells Rocky.
The fighter seems to be the only one really in his comer.
“I ain’t no bum,” he responds, as blood and sweat drench his puffy mug.
After the fight resumes, Spider headbutts Rocky in the left eye — an illegal “cheap shot.” Rocky fights back and puts Spider on the matt, winning the fight.
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The spectators boo Rocky as he leaves the ring, holding a towel to his eye. He asks for a cigarette from an acquaintance who just lit one.
“Yeah,” the guy says, “you can have this one.”
A woman cries out, “Hey, Rock, you’re a bum. You know that? You’re a bum!”
Rocky won the fight, but he’s far from gaining any respect in this gritty community.
He gets on with his daily routine, Dougherty said, working as a “leg-breaker” for a loan shark.
“He’s like the ‘lowest of the low’ in a lot of ways,” Dougherty said. “He doesn’t seem like a bad guy, but everyone sees him as a waste of time. Like, you can barely hold the conversation with him. He’s just kind of like a big lump.”
His best friend, Paulie, also needs a lot of work. This butcher shop worker can be a major jerk, especially to his sister, Adrian, a painfully shy pet shop clerk whom Rocky wants to date. This fledgling family of misfits has nowhere to go but up.
But they, along with the audience, are taken on a soaring trajectory when Rocky gets the chance to fight the heavyweight champ and flashy showman, Apollo Creed, in a publicity stunt to commemorate the U.S. Bicentennial of 1976.
Dougherty recounted how, the night before the big fight, Rocky told Adrian, now his girlfriend, that he didn’t care if he lost or got hurt.
All Rocky wants is to last all 15 rounds. If he is still standing when the fight is over, he will know he was not just another “bum from the neighborhood,” Dougherty said.
Forget spoiler alerts; this movie is 50 years old.
Rocky loses the fight to Apollo by decision, but he goes “the distance” and wins his own personal redemption, a much-deserved dose of human dignity, Dougherty said.
Meanwhile, in real life, Stallone gained the impetus for a film franchise.
There are six “Rocky” movies, plus three more “Creed” films that focus on Apollo’s son, Adonis, whom Rocky trains and mentors.
Dougherty’s Philadelphia upbringing included “Rocky” as part of the local culture. When he’s not writing for America, he is the director of mission and ministry at his alma mater, St. Joseph’s Preparatory School in Philadelphia.
He said Stallone was born in Hell’s Kitchen, Manhattan, but moved to Philadelphia with his family at 15.
Dougherty said his own father was buddies with the movie star’s younger brother, Frank, and he remembers visiting the Stallone home and seeing the future Rocky in the background.
“It’s kind of the Kensington area,” Dougherty said. “In the ’90s, it was called the ‘Badlands.’ By the time I went to high school, there, in the early 2000s, it was a very impoverished neighborhood — a lot of drugs, a lot of homelessness.”
Gentrification is starting to take hold in the area, but Philadelphia residents embrace their “Rocky” heritage as they do for the local professional sports teams, Dougherty said. He added that tourists try to taste the legend.
On any given day, he said, out-of-towners are seen charging up the 72 steps of the Philadelphia Museum of Art to re-enact Rocky’s iconic training milestone.
The Catholic faith also surfaces in other installments of the “Rocky” franchise, Dougherty said.
In “Rocky II,” for example, the night before his rematch with Apollo, the hero makes a nighttime stop outside the rectory window of St. Thomas Aquinas Church on Morris Street — also the scene of Rocky and Adrian’s wedding — which is in South Philly, Dougherty said.
Rocky yells up at the window, asking for a pre-fight blessing, and the priest obliges — in Italian.
The scene is recreated in “Rocky V,” when the fighter, now a manager, takes his trainee, Tommy Gunn, to the rectory window to ask for Father Carmine’s blessing once more.
Again, the priest obliges, and they respond with the sign of the cross.
“Thanks, Father,” Rocky yells to the priest. “I’ll see you in church!”
“Hey, man,” Tommy asks, “what’d you do this for?”
Rocky’s response: “It don’t hurt havin’ an angel on your side.”