Pugili depicts the different stages in the life and career of a boxer. The film is about the boxer in general and about Tiberio Mitri, an Italian champion from the forties and fifties, in particular. The film is made up of four elements. An interview with Mitri filmed in colour functions as prologue and above all as epilogue. Within this framework, three black & white films are to be found. The first is about the young amateur boxer Ciro from a poor industrial town near Naples. In a fight that is decisive for the rest of his career, he has to take on his best friend Rafaele. The second episode is about a novice professional. He spends the night before an important fight in a dreary hotel room in a rainy England. His manager, an old friend and a reporter keep him company, but can’t make him forget his loneliness and fear. The third episode tells the story of an older boxer who suddenly see his career end after a dramatic defeat. The different parts of the film have a thematic link, but are also tied together by the underlying melancholy tone. The film succeeds in avoiding all the clichés of the well-known boxing- film genre. ‘A sensitive meditation about the different seasons in a (boxer’s) life’, according to Variety critic David Rooney. The film won the prize of the international film critics (Fipresci) at the Turin festival.
