Classics: The 'Body and Soul' of John Garfield

John Garfield was at the height of his fame and his talent when he made "Body and Soul" (Olive), one of the great boxing dramas and arguably the definitive boxing noir of talent and drive corrupted, and "Force of Evil" (Olive), a more quietly subversive and corrosive film noir of family, business, and brutal competition. Both films have been on DVD before but are now available on Blu-ray as well as in newly-remastered DVD editions from Olive.

"Body and Soul" (1947), directed by Robert Rossen, stars John Garfield as scrappy Brooklyn boy Charley Davis, an ambitious street kid who fights his way to the top of the fight game. Charley, who watched his father die by a stray bullet after working himself to a husk in a two-bit candy store in a Brooklyn slum, is determined to be a success at all costs. "Every man for himself," is his motto, and the compromises he makes in the name of fame and fortune alienates his friends, family, and loyal girlfriend (Lilli Palmer), who plays an interesting role: a cultured, continental young woman who has lived all over Europe yet is, like, Charley, a poor but plucky girl with no money. The difference between them is that she works her way through art school, determined to make her own way in the world, while Charlie  hasn't any patience for that kind of sucker's game.

Rossen, directing from an Oscar-nominated screenplay by Abraham Polonsky, takes us into a world of smoky fight clubs, crooked promoters, and crime bosses controlling calling the shots on title fights, including who wins on a given night. William Conrad co-stars as Charley's promoter, sidelined when Charley signs with the New York gangster who runs the fight game, and Joseph Pevney (future director of many episodes of "Star Trek") is memorable as Charley's best friend and manager, who warns him against making deals with the mob. The finale admittedly backs away from the darker implications of Charlie's actions in the final minutes, a familiar bow to the Hollywood desire for a "happy ending" against all onscreen evidence, but otherwise it is both a powerful morality tale and a bare-knuckle drama of the American dream gone sour. The boxing scenes, shot with a handheld camera and a documentary immediacy, were a major influence on Martin Scorsese when he made "Raging Bull."

"Force of Evil" (1948) is a landmark of film noir naturalism and one of the most powerful Hollywood films of the 1940s. Adapted from of Ira Wolfert’s novel "Tucker’s People," the film casts its lens to the New York underworld of numbers rackets. This time Garfield, all cocky charisma and soulless confidence, is the up-from-the-slums kid turned cynical, smart-talking lawyer Joe Morse, a Wall Street pro on retainer to the syndicates, and Thomas Gomez is his weary older brother, a small-time numbers man being squeezed by the very mob that Garfield represents. Torn between ambition and family, Joe's conflicted loyalties force him to confront his own values and turns the crime drama into a morality tale that Polonsky and Garfield deliver like a gut-punch.

Polonsky shoots much of the drama on the streets of New York rather than on studio backlots and he captures both a grimy urban reality and an exaggerated sense of a city in the shadow of the corporate underworld. The devastating finale on the garbage-strewn waterfront turns the city into a tawdry hell on Earth, into which Garfield descends in an act of sacrifice and redemption. It also serves as a metaphor for growing corporate power putting entrepreneurs and mom-and-pop operations out of business, a theme that has only become more relevant in the subsequent decades. The dialogue has a hard, unaffected poetry to it and the film features what is arguably Garfield’s finest performance. Writer/director Polonsky was blacklisted soon after the film was released and was unable to make another film for two decades, and Garfield (also under suspicion for his political leanings) died just a few years later, making the film a powerful memorial to both artists at the height of their talents. The film was chosen for Library of Congress National Film Registry in 1994.

Both black and white films look very good and "Force of Evil" features a video introduction by Martin Scorsese recorded for the film's VHS release twenty years ago or so.

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