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Body and Soul Movie Review

Body and Soul is a 1947 noir sports drama film directed by Robert Rossen and starring John Garfield. It’s a flawed, but thematically important movie.

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“He could’ve had the whole world.

So he leaned over sideways and grabbed you“

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An amateur boxer gets into the professional leagues much to his mother’s dismay. He is forced to reconsider his choices when a shady promoter tries to hire him. This movie remains one of the most overt anti-capitalist films that Hollywood has ever produced and it’s admirable how forceful and powerful Rossen was in directing and messaging here. He would go on to be accused of communist leanings in the next decade and the movie is somewhat forgotten today, but it deserves more love for everything that it did right.

Undoubtedly, there is a lot of preaching and heavy-handed dialogue in this film that would have been much more powerful had it been more subtle and nuanced in its approach. Thus, it was dated in that area. Still, it deserves praise for depicting the boxing business as it was and probably still is – full of greedy people who would use you and destroy you when you are not physically capable anymore to do the sport.

Body and Soul also deserves high praise for actually depicting a black character. Yes, he is a tragic character who dies rather melodramatically, but at least they showed the racism and discrimination of this era, and how especially prevalent it was in sports such as boxing. The entire third act of the movie was so heartbreaking.

Another highlight is the scene in the ring that was artistically and strikingly shot by the famed cinematographer James Wong Howe. It was so authentic and raw and it predated those similar sequences from Scorsese’s ‘Raging Bull’. It’s a shame that the film is not as well known as those other classic boxing movies.

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I did wish for better characterization, though. The dialogue is too on-the-nose and the acting is only solid with John Garfield being pretty good, but hardly deserving of his Oscar nomination. Others were all fine in their rather minor roles. The cinematography, score and noirish atmosphere were the highlights while the slow pace was the main flaw of the picture.