OVP: Body and Soul (1947)

Film: Body and Soul (1947)

Stars: John Garfield, Lilli Palmer, Hazel Brooks, Anne Revere, William Conrad, Canada Lee

Director: Robert Rossen

Oscar History: 3 nominations/1 win (Best Actor-John Garfield, Film Editing*, Original Screenplay)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 2/5 stars

John Garfield is not an actor many people discuss today, certainly in the same confines as we do most classic film stars of his ilk.  This happens-actors go out of fashion or don't land a classic in the way that others do, and as a result they are forgotten.  But Garfield's weird in that he starred in at least one proper classic film (The Postman Always Rings Twice), but more so he's an actor that sort of serves as a template to modern film acting.  Before Brando & James Dean, John Garfield kind of invented the schtick of a sensitive, brooding, & handsome soul that completely contradicted the era's other top stars & pillars of masculinity like Clark Gable & Spencer Tracy.  Garfield's life was tragic (he'd make a brilliant Star of the Month, and we'll probably get there at some point), but it's hard to understand why he hasn't caught on more in the way other classic film stars have gotten their renaissance.  If he did, surely we'd pay attention to this, his second of two Oscar nominations, and a film that would be a big hit...despite the fact that his career would virtually be over a few years later, when he'd die at the age of only 39.

(Spoilers Ahead) The movie features Garfield as Charley Davis, a young man from the hood who, despite his mother's (Revere) protestations, becomes a boxing champion.  In the process of becoming a title holder, though, he becomes involved with the seedy underworld of boxing, and starts to take bets on himself, and participating in fixed matches.  We see much of the film in flashback on a night when Charley is deciding whether or not the huge payday he'll earn is worth giving up his title in a crooked fight after the death of his coach Ben (Lee).  Thanks to the love of his on-again-off-again girlfriend Peg (Palmer), he decides to stay in the match & win, thus retaining his dignity & respect even if he doesn't make his fortune.

Body and Soul is not original, but instead based on the play Golden Boy by Clifford Odets (which had already been a movie with Barbara Stanwyck & William Holden at this point).  It's therefore a film I don't feel too bad chiding a bit for its screenplay, which is rife with cliches, and while it was formative (the film is clearly the prototype for dozens of future boxing movies in virtually every way), it was still dealing with stories & tales we'd already seen before from arguably the cinema's most-overused sport.  That isn't to say it isn't good in parts.  The Oscar-winning editing is fantastic, and would become the Gold Standard for boxing movies for decades to come (both Rocky and Raging Bull owe the movie a debt of gratitude).  It gets points for being formative, but I'm not going to ignore the cliches.

It also doesn't help that the acting choices are unusual, and really ill-advised in some cases.  Garfield's good if never expanding into the tenderer & funnier moments we get in his early scenes (Charley the Charming is a better fit for Garfield than Charley the Cad), but his costars are all a miss.  Palmer has been great in other work (she deserved an Oscar nomination for her late-career performance in The Other Side of the Wind), but she has zilch chemistry with Garfield, and doesn't really have a read on Peg.  The same can be said for "other woman" Alice as played by Hazel Brooks.  The acting & writing are both misses for Body & Soul, and as a result I left mildly disappointed even if I get where it was coming from.

That said, the movie has a great reputation today in part due to its crazy backstory.  If you look through the call list of Body & Soul you'll notice that virtually everyone involved in this movie was eventually blacklisted (Garfield, Revere, Lee, director Rossen, screenwriter Abraham Polonsky), and that's not a coincidence.  Body & Soul is about as socialist of a movie as you could get past the censors in 1947.  The film is entirely about Charley abandoning capitalism (and portraying the money-hungry boxing managers as pure greed), in favor of the dignity of a working life, even if it foregoes comfort.  The film also is not shy about showing Garfield's Jewish heritage (something that Gentleman's Agreement, which the actor also starred in 1947, also showed), and at the time anti-Semitism wasn't far off from some of the "leftist" accusations of the HUAC committee.  It's fascinating to watch the movie knowing what would happen to so many people who made the film because the picture is not subtle.  Alas, it's too predictable for me to be all that intrigued outside of curiosity.