Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the fighter becomes surrounded by shady characters, including an unethical promoter named Roberts, who tempt the man with a number of vices. Charley finds himself faced with increasingly difficult choices.
John Garfield Lilli Palmer Hazel Brooks Anne Revere William Conrad Joseph Pevney Lloyd Gough Canada Lee Larry Anzalone Al Bain Steve Benton Eddie Borden Paul Bradley James Burke George M. Carleton James Carlisle Wheaton Chambers Mary Currier Sayre Dearing Joe Devlin Artie Dorell Al Eben Caferino Garcia Herschel Graham Joe Gray Virginia Gregg Stuart Hall John Indrisano Sheldon Jett Show All…
Tijelo i duša, 出卖灵肉的人, 身体与灵魂, Sang et Or, Jagd nach Millionen, 灵与欲, Cuerpo y alma, Anima e corpo, Тело и душа, Cos i ànima, Corpo e Alma, Ostatnia runda, 육체와 영혼, Kropp och själ
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USA
“Body and Soul” are worth only their weight in betting odds in Robert Rossen’s sports noir classic.
If Rossen’s “The Hustler” was a fable that taught America the necessity of losing, then “Soul” is a fairy tale that depicts the dehumanization of victory.
The fairy godmother, here - works not in magic, but in money.
When Cinderella Man John Garfield, as a poor Jewish son of a candy store owner, begins to box his way to the big time, in swoops a parasitic promoter. But the glass slippers he grants turn just as quickly into cutting shards; drawing blood money in every bout.
The messaging in Rossen’s “Body and Soul” is so outright anti-capitalist, it comes as little surprise that…
John Garfield gives a powerful performance as a young man who thinks nothing matters but money and that prizefighting is the way to get it. It's a brutal depiction of a good-hearted fellow who makes one wrong decision after another in hopes of making something out of himself that people will look up to. But he isn't intelligent enough to realize that money and fame aren't the means to respect and happiness, but rather pitfalls on the road thereto. Garfield gives real life to a character not always easy to like, providing a human quality that makes us understand his wrong choices. There are other good performances, by Lloyd Gough as a crooked fight promoter, by William Conrad as Garfield's…
“I’m beautiful, why should I wanna be rich?”
This doesn’t do all that much to separate itself from most boxing movies of the time, but it’s critique of Capitalism is very ahead of its time. It also has a really solid cast of characters and the story is very engaging for something like this.
It’s sad to note that a good chunk of the cast and crew of this movie were blacklisted by Hollywood during the HUAC Communist hunt. The only one who really continued a career afterwards was the director Robert Rossen because he identified 57 people as Communists and was taken off of the blacklist after doing so.
The blacklist itself disappeared by the early 1960’s, but by then most of the blacklist had moved on from the film industry, as it was nearly impossible to find work while on the list.
Anyway, there’s your film history for the day you’re welcome.
Everybody dies. To simply fight for something or someone and not for money is a fallacy, and whatever you pocket's merely part of an investment. The soul vies for everything meaningful despite being exploited for the gain of all those unconcerned with the moneymaker, all while the body which exudes said essence waits for the world to decide what to do with it. A man wants to do what he knows he can do to provide, but alongside a systemic scourge that knows precisely how to undo all of the well-meaning hard work that places itself squarely in the pockets of those out for themselves with no one respectable in mind.
It has heart and I didn't mind it but truthfully the story was a little heavy handed but luckily John Garfield and especially the Camera work of James Wong Howe was spectacular. The story had a lot going on and I didn't mind how it was structured it just pushed certain narrative moments a little too hard. I really got ensconced with the final 15 minutes which really makes it the price of admission and kept you on your toes to where this was going to land. Worth checking out especially for the ring shots and it does demonize the underbelly of the boxing world which I am kinda surprised that they got away with.
What's the best boxing movie ever? No, it's this.
Body and Soul is the archetypal Rossen rise-and-fall story, and exceptional in every way: the grubbily poetic Abraham Polonsky script that indicts capitalism, anti-Semitism and ruthless individualism, career-best performances from Palmer, Canada Lee and the great John Garfield, and a climax of shimmering, ferocious catharsis, shot by James Wong Howe on rollerskates (33 years before Scorsese won plaudits for doing the exact same thing).
It's a superb character study and a stunning sports movie, but it's also a bruising, uncompromising polemic, even by late-'40s standards, and with it came a terrible cost, as 10 of the cast and crew – including the writer, director and star – were subsequently targeted by…
"Body and Soul" is the prototype and likely the best of the boxing films that revealed the corrupt underside of the popular spectator sport in mid-20th century America. It's also a critique of capitalism from a production and acting team that's a literal Who's Who of people blacklisted and hounded by HUAC in the 1950s - John Garfield, Anne Revere, Canada Lee, director Robert Rossen and screenwriter Abraham Polonsky. Noirish and dark, it's an excellent film that I liked except for a few minor quibbles which I'll detail later.
It was produced by Enterprise Studios the short-lived independent film company co-founded by John Garfield after he left Warners, which was also made ""Force of Evil", "Arch of Triump" and Ophuls'…
Brutally direct, both emotionally and violently. Does follow a familiar theme seen in most boxing flicks, but Body and Soul (1947) ability to not waste time on unnecessary diversions becomes its strong point. And John Garfield is on top of his game! He's done boxing pics before, so he knew what he was doing. Actually everyone did a excellent job with their slimy characters surrounding the boxing business, and in that regard Body and Soul becomes a very authentic experience.
75/100
Little heavy-handed and the plot is quite straightforward but it's engaging, everything is sharply executed which makes the whole thing very effective. Ending is a typical Hollywood one but that final bout was genuinely brilliant.
Also Scorsese nabbed a lot from this so there's that.
By-the-numbers boxing picture elevated with the hindsight of knowing John Garfield, playing the boxer who is supposed to take a dive, triumphantly going into fuck it mode and knocking his opponent out instead, prioritizing his integrity over careerism, ending his boxing career in defiance of powerful forces demanding he do so, just as he would go on to do in real life when HUAC forced him to take the stand to name his friends and wife as communists and John Garfield took that stand and named no one, ending his acting career. We should pour one out for John Garfield every single day, an absolute beacon of righteousness.
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EDIT: Just found out John Garfield and Canada Lee both died of heart attacks two weeks apart after refusing to cooperate with HUAC 👁️
Body and Soul doesn’t offer anything new outside the typical boxing film formula. It is very much beat-for-beat of what one comes to expect in sports dramas, with the emotional rise and fall and rise again all categorized and depicted. But, when judging a film, I’m not really concerned with originality all that much— if the emotional weight hits, it does not matter to me how many times I’ve seen the same story over and over again. As a film, Body and Soul just works. There’s such a realism to how John Garfield inhabits his role. This film feels like an extension to his own life in a way, expanding the Jewish-American diaspora in film, shedding a new light on…
Fractions of seconds determine the exits of a fight. A fist thrown too soon or too late might make your name disappear into oblivion, a career ended before it even started. But then again, a fist thrown too soon or too late might make you rich and a career in such a beastly sport would be superfluous. Just this once, you might throw the fight, just to put some money aside. Once again, that money was never enough to begin with. Money, doesn't matter how large the sum, it's never enough, it'll never be enough.
Robert Rossen's Body and Soul disguises itself as a sports movie, and it does so with an incredibly dynamic camerawork and framing that will influence…
