Before the big franchises, Stallone wrote and directed a cinema of neighbourhoods, brothers and would-be successes that deserves a proper look.
Stallone before he was reduced to his icons
Quentin Tarantino's defence of Sylvester Stallone gives particular weight to Paradise Alley, his directorial debut in 1978. In Cinema Speculation, published in 2022, he devotes a chapter to it. The review of the book published in Momentary Cinema on 22 October 2023 highlights that Tarantino values its writerly personality and the singular vision of that film, while acknowledging its rough edges. The focus is on a specific work, not on declaring the actor's entire career flawless.
To understand that choice, it is worth setting aside Stallone's most repeated image for a moment. His body and his later characters ended up occupying much of the public conversation, but writing a neighbourhood scene and directing an action film do not require exactly the same decisions. Paradise Alley allows us to observe the creator who organises relationships, invents voices and builds an atmosphere around three brothers. Physical strength is part of that world; it does not explain it entirely.
It is also important to separate the credits for the films. Stallone wrote and starred in Rocky, from 1976, directed by John G. Avildsen. In Rocky II, released in 1979, he also took on the direction. Between the two sits Paradise Alley. That sequence shows that his work as a filmmaker did not simply begin by extending an already established commercial brand: before that, he tried another story, with other characters and a different relationship between humour, spectacle and melodrama.
Paradise Alley: words, brothers and a boxing ring
The film places the Carboni brothers in 1940s New York. Cosmo, played by Stallone, brings a verbal energy that contrasts with Victor's physical power. Lenny completes a triangle of interests and affections that do not always move together. Wrestling offers an economic opportunity, but that opportunity also changes the way each brother sees the others. A means of getting by can become a way of exploiting one another.
The neighbourhood has a dramatic function of its own. Encounters, conversations and small businesses give human scale to a story that could have been limited to setting up fights. The film pays attention to those around its leads, even if not all those lines are developed to the same extent. That abundance creates a sense of life and, at the same time, produces some of its imbalances. Its personality partly comes from allowing the setting to spill beyond the main plot.
Cosmo is especially useful for observing Stallone the writer. His authority does not come solely from physical dominance. He tries to persuade, sell an opportunity and get others to buy into the story he is putting forward. Words are a survival tool. The character can be amusing and irritating in the same exchange, because his imagination sits alongside self-interest and an obvious inability to judge the consequences of his ideas.
The ring turns those family tensions into public spectacle. The body taking the punishment belongs to one person, while others calculate what that punishment might produce. The film thus pits the excitement of the bout against a less comfortable question about who decides and who pays. It is not necessary to present the brothers as closed-off symbols to see the inequality that takes hold between them when the chance to make money seems to justify everything.
Rocky II and the responsibility of directing a sequel
In Five Things, featured in W in April 2020, Tarantino considered Rocky II his personal favourite of 1979 and praised Stallone's performance. The comment also supports his interest in that sequel.
Rocky II poses a different problem. The audience knows Rocky and expects to find a recognisable emotional experience again. The sequel must preserve that familiarity and explain why the character needs to keep fighting. Stallone now has a figure whose way of speaking, clumsiness and stubbornness already carry meaning for the viewer. Directing him means deciding how much he can change without losing what made him relatable.
Life outside the ring is essential to that task. Work, money, his relationship with Adrian and the difficulties of adapting prevent the return to fighting from being a mere genre obligation. Rocky has to be placed in a world that does not organise its rules around physical endurance. His dignity depends on more than absorbing blows. The character remains vulnerable when there is no visible opponent to face.
Comparing the two films makes it possible to see two ways of working with popular melodrama. Paradise Alley spreads attention across brothers and a more scattered setting; Rocky II concentrates much of its energy on a central figure who carries the memory of the previous film. In both, physical effort needs an emotional story to matter. A fight can be visually impressive in itself, but it only gains consequences when we know what relationship, desire or promise is at stake.
Tarantino's endorsement serves to look again at that work of writing and direction. It does not require treating a curiosity as superior to a hit, nor excusing all its problems. It suggests giving Stallone the same attention granted to other popular auteurs: watching how he builds characters, what tone he is after and what world he makes appear between one scene and the next. Paradise Alley offers a particularly revealing entry point because it retains ambitions that the later image of its lead may have left in the background.
See the selection of filmmakers and actors admired by Tarantino.