Vaglietti zum Dritten

A documentary about a boxer that measures up to the best boxing features. Alfredo Knuchel, an authentic and idiosyncratic self-taught film-maker, followed the Swiss boxer Stefano Vaglietti at length and intensively during a difficult comeback. Vaglietti is large and fat (super-heavy-weight) and a naïve man. As in all genre boxing films, the good-hearted mindless hulk is surrounded by the wrong friends. Excessive doping turns him into an addict to hard drugs. In his good years, the young Stefano, who started boxing to fight his way out of his poor background, was twice Swiss champion. In the film he gets ready to be champion again for the third time, but everything is pointing to the fact that this is hopeless. Knuchel follows the desperate attempt of the ex-boxer, who had only just left the stage of the homeless addict behind him, to make his return to the top. The film penetrates deeply into the private life of a man who has lost touch in almost all respects and only just keeps his grip on life. That makes the portrait so humiliating, but also exciting. You really want the old softy to make it. Certainly when he hobbles through the streets of Bern like a frogman to get back some of his fitness and stamina.