Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.0
Audio		3.5
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Body and Soul Blu-ray Movie 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 Movie, 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 Movie, Audio Quality 

Body and Soul's lossless DTS-HD Master Audio Mono audio mix is generally very clear, albeit shallow, but there is some niggling distortion in the midrange that is especially noticeable in some of Huge Friedhofer's brass oriented cues. (It should be noted that Johnny Green's iconic song of the same name as the film long predates the film—it was actually introduced in the 1930s by Gertrude Lawrence—and was interpolated by Friedhofer into his score. Dialogue is clearly presented and the overall mix is well prioritized with very good fidelity.

Body and Soul Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

As is typical with these Olive Film Blu-rays, no supplements of any kind are included on the disc.

Body and Soul Blu-ray Movie, 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.