This was the fight of the century. Heavyweight boxers American Joe Lewis and Germany’s darling Max Schmelling fought twice in the mid-thirties. The Fight tells the tale of Joe Lewis, son of a black sharecropper, who rose against all odds in a white man’s sport and Max Schmelling an aging boxer who made a stunning comeback when he beat Lewis in their first fight and then became a folk hero while embracing Nazism. The intersection of these two unlikely stories with the momentous historical events of the thirties makes for a thrilling documentary. Weaving in and out of riveting vintage era newsreels, breathtaking fight footage, interviews with historians and boxer friends of Lewis, and portraits of colorful promoters, “Yussel the Muscle” and “Uncle Mike,” director Barak Goodman brings life to the past with an immediacy that takes one’s breath away.  RD