Body and Soul Blu-ray Review
Golden Boy redux.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, July 2, 2012
John Garfield was still Jules Garfield when he attracted notice in a bit part in Clifford Odets' biggest hit for The Group
Theater,
Golden
Boy, which starred Luther Adler and Frances Farmer on Broadway, and then Farmer and Elia Kazan on tour. Farmer
of course had been a
major casting coup for The Group's Harold Clurman and Odets, after they caught her doing summer stock in the summer
of 1937. She was
then arguably the hottest young film actress in the world and her first professional stage performances had also
received rapturous reviews.
Farmer's box office appeal no doubt helped make
Golden Boy the sellout it was for the 1937 – 38 season, and it
was one of the few
examples in those days of a film actress acquitting herself rather well on the legitimate stage. Garfield took the more
typical path for actors
of that era, starting on the stage and then answering the siren call of Hollywood. The paths of Garfield, Clurman, Odets
and Farmer would
repeatedly criss cross over the coming years, and Farmer in fact would have affairs with all three men. But the world of
Hollywood is a
vicious seesaw at times. In 1937, Farmer was a ravishingly beautiful and immensely talented actress who had
conquered Hollywood and
Broadway in little more than a year and a half, and Garfield was a bit player still struggling to really make his name
despite having had
featured roles in several Broadway plays. By 1940, Farmer's tempestuous temperament had started to catch up to her,
and Garfield had
become a major film star. It was Garfield's insistence that Warner Brothers borrow Farmer from Paramount to co-star in
1940's
Flowing
Gold that gave Farmer one of her few starring roles in the last couple of years of what was a tragically short film
career. But that
Golden Boy experience continued to inform several aspects of Garfield's equally short, if not quite so tragic,
career. Several films
Garfield made in the late forties utilized the central conceit of Odets' iconic play—namely that of a soulful, conflicted
fighter of some sort
attempting to find his true calling in life—and Garfield himself played the leading role of
Golden Boy's Joe
Bonaparte in a short-lived
Broadway revival in the early fifties, just a month or two before the actor's untimely death at the age of 39.
If the central subtext of
Golden Boy was the dialectic of Art versus Commerce,
Body and Soul is firmly in
the
Commerce camp, choosing to explore the vagaries of "success" and the effects that success can have on even a well
meaning person. The film's hero is Charley Davis (John Garfield, in an Oscar nominated performance), a kid who is
pretty
good with his fists and ends up entering a professional boxing career despite the objections of his Mother (something
remarkably similar—albeit with a different parent—to Odets'
Golden Boy). Once he's on this career path,
Charley is
surrounded by more and more unseemly characters, with a resultant degradation of his own inherent morality.
Charley's
inner turmoil is at least as contentious as any actual boxing match he fights and provides the central dramatic impetus
of
the film.
The story of an idealistic young man bruised and battered by the vagaries of life has been told a million times in film, but
Body and Soul wraps the oft-told tale in a package that may seem old pat to modern day eyes, but which was
rather new and bracing when the film came out in 1947. John Garfield fits hand in glove with the role of hardscrabble
New York kid Charley Davis, a
young man who has won an amateur boxing match and whose best friend Shorty (Joseph Pevney) argues should lead
Charley to a pro career. When Charley's hard working father is killed in a gang related explosion, Charley pushes aside
the
vociferous arguments of his mother (Anne Revere) that he finish school and pursue an "honorable" profession, and
Charley instead sets out to prove himself in the boxing ring, a career which not so coincidentally also means some
impressive
lucre. Meanwhile, Charley has fallen for exotic art student Peg (Lilli Palmer), a girl who supports him in his boxing
dreams.
Body and Soul was the product of some committed "leftists", including screenwriter Abraham Polonsky and
Robert Rossen, both of whom would soon be caught up in the Red Scare and incipient McCarthyism. Therefore this tale
of fists becomes a none too subtle indictment of Capitalism out of control, a system that chews up Charley and spits him
out, with his dreams in shreds. Charley finds himself the unwilling pawn of unscrupulous fight promoters and an
ineffective manager (played by a young William Conrad, not quite at
Cannon levels of girth), and Charley's crisis
of conscience about whether to throw a fight becomes the dramatic fulcrum around which much of
Body and
Soul hinges.
Trivia fans may get a kick out of seeing Joseph Pevney in one of his few screen roles. As was discussed in the review of
the recent Olive release of
The Night of the Grizzly, Pevney moved from acting into a long and successful directorial career where he
helmed several very good to excellent feature films, but also contributed to a number of iconic television series that are
fondly remembered by Baby Boomers. Lovers of continuity errors may also want to keep an eagle eye out for the first
fight card featuring Charley's name very early in the film which features the more typical spelling of "Charlie".
The film is notable for a number of reasons, not the least of which is Garfield's bristling Oscar nominated performance.
But behind the camera was ace cinematographer James Wong Howe, who caught some incredibly visceral boxing
footage that clearly presages
Raging Bull (Howe reportedly wore roller skates and wheeled around the ring to
catch a lot of the incredibly exciting sequences). Rossen is otherwise a fairly unobtrusive director, emphasizing the
drama without a lot of showy directorial moves.
Body and Soul Blu-ray, Video Quality
Body and Soul is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Olive Films with an AVC encoded 1080p transfer in 1.34:1. We're
now getting a new wave of Olive releases that may be controlled by Paramount but which are not Paramount catalog
releases
per se, and there may have been a bit of concern as to how these transfers would shake out, given Olive's
overall excellent track record thus far with regard to its actual Paramount catalog releases. If this film and the recently
reviewed
Johnny Guitar are
any indication, worries can be pretty much jettisoned.
Body and Soul looks generally sumptuous, with James Wong
Howe's lustrous black and white cinematography looking deeply burnished and beautifully filmic throughout the vast bulk of
this presentation. There are some extremely minor fluctuations in contrast which are a niggling concern, and several
tweedy costumes present minor stability issues, but otherwise this is a sharp and clear presentation that offers very
appealing fine object detail and nicely rich black levels. As has been the Olive Films standard operating procedure, no overt
digital manipulation appears to have been applied to the transfer and this presentation offers natural grain.
Body and Soul Blu-ray, Overall Score and Recommendation
Body and Soul will probably strike some younger viewers as pretty pat and cliché ridden, but there's no denying the
punch the film packs (sorry, couldn't resist). Garfield's really interesting combination of toughness and vulnerability has
never been more potently utilized, and the supporting cast is full of wonderful little turns. Polonsky's screenplay isn't
especially subtle, but it also provides Garfield with a field day for some fantastically dramatic scenes, and the fight
sequences here are simply legendary, for good reason. James Wong Howe is about as legendary a cinematographer as
they come, and
Body and Soul is one of his greatest showpieces. Olive Films is rapidly becoming a mini-major of
sorts with an incredibly impressive slate of catalog releases that for whatever reason the majors themselves are deigning
not to release under their own auspices.
Body and Soul continues the niche label's track record of releasing nice
looking transfers that don't artificially tweak the image, and which provide decent lossless audio as well. About the only
thing Olive needs to step up its presence in would be subtitles and supplements. Even without those bells and whistles,
though, this release comes
Highly recommended.
