Body and Soul (1947)

John Garfield giving his testimony before HUAC, April 23, 1951

 

BODY AND SOUL        A-                 
USA  (104 mi)  1947  d:  Robert Rossen

Money’s got no conscience, Charlie.  Here, take it.       —Roberts (Lloyd Gough)

According to film critic Jim Hoberman, author of several books and longtime critic for The Village Voice, BODY AND SOUL (47) is the most Jewish film released between THE JAZZ SINGER (1927) and THE PRODUCERS (1967), where more communists worked on this movie than any other American film, described as the product of the most concentrated leftist radical energy ever seen in Hollywood, released shortly before the House Un-American Activities Committee held nine days of hearings in October 1947 into alleged communist propaganda and influence in the Hollywood motion picture industry.  This was precipitated by a July 29, 1946 column entitled “A Vote for Joe Stalin” written by William R. Wilkerson, publisher and founder of The Hollywood Reporter, who provided a list of alleged communists and their sympathizers.  Drawing upon the list, which included 43 subpoenaed names, 19 of whom refused to testify, leading to ten writers and directors known as the Hollywood Ten who were cited for contempt of Congress and immediately fired the next day by the studios, creating a Hollywood blacklist on November 25, 1947.  Eventually more than 300 artists, including directors, radio commentators, actors, and most notably screenwriters were blacklisted by the studios in hearings that lasted into the early 1950’s.  While the blacklist was rarely made explicit or verifiable, it directly damaged the careers of scores of individuals working in the motion picture industry, some of whom left the country to find work elsewhere, while some worked under aliases, and others remained out of work for over a decade.  The blacklist was rooted in events of the 30’s during the Great Depression when two major industry strikes increased tensions between the producers and the unions, particularly the Screen Writers Guild, which came under attack by the House Un-American Activities Committee for the radical leanings of many of its members, which escalated in 1947 when more than a dozen writers were called to testify.  Among the films scrutinized by the committee were Frank Capra’s IT’S A WONDERFUL LIFE (1946), something of a surprise, and Edward Dmytryk’s CROSSFIRE (1947), a searing portrait of anti-Semitism, where Dmytryk is one of the Hollywood Ten.  While there was a wartime alliance against Hitler and Nazi Germany between the United States and the Soviet Union, postwar perceptions changed, with communists increasingly coming under fire, becoming a focus of American fears and hatred.  Of interest, in 2012, in a 65th anniversary article, Wilkerson’s son apologized for the newspaper’s role in the blacklist, claiming his father was motivated by revenge for his own thwarted ambition to own a studio.  The committee was always looking for a big named Hollywood star to provide an exclamation point to their work, placing much of their emphasis on John Garfield who was called before the HUAC committee in 1951.

John Garfield was born in the Lower East Side of Manhattan to Russian Jewish immigrants in a poor, working class neighborhood where communists were not unusual and were simply part of the everyday landscape, joining Lee Strasberg’s New York-based Group Theater before moving to Hollywood in the late 30’s where he became associated with gritty, hard-nosed, and working-class characters.  While his wife was a communist, as was his secretary, there’s no indication Garfield was ever a member, nonetheless the House Un-American Activities Committee hounded Garfield to his death, as after his original testimony, he learned they were reviewing the transcripts for possible perjury charges, where he died at the age of 39 of a heart attack, allegedly aggravated by the stress of the blacklisting.  Director Robert Rossen’s parents were also Russian Jewish immigrants from the Lower East Side, where both Rossen and Garfield ran in a similar gang-infested world of gamblers, bootleggers, hustlers, and prostitutes, where Rossen was drawn to the Communist Party as a form of social protest against the disillusionment caused by the social and economic hardships of the Depression in the 30’s.  Add to this screenwriter Abraham Polonsky, also from Russian Jewish parents in New York, where we begin to see a pattern of real life that left an imprint on each of these artists.  Rossen was blacklisted in 1951, one of the 19 unfriendly witnesses who refused to testify in 1947, but felt deceived and disillusioned by the Communist Party’s support of the brutal Russian dictatorship under Stalin, breaking all prior ties with the party in 1949, but was able to work again in 1953 after providing the names of 57 other people who were or had been communists.  If one explores the narrative of his later work THE HUSTLER (1961), in many ways it parallels the themes and storyline of BODY AND SOUL.  It’s also interesting that ALL THE KING’S MEN (1949), directed before the blacklisting, and THE HUSTLER (1961), directed afterwards, were both selected to the National Film Registry.  Both Polonsky and Garfield, teamed up again in Force of Evil (1948), were blacklisted as much for the tone of their films as their politics, where Polonsky’s heroes are cocky, self-assured loners who are outside the mainstream of society, the kind of guys that break the rules in order to get ahead, often disregarding the interests of others, while Garfield was viewed as a working class hero, a kid literally from the streets who became a success in Hollywood bringing a rough-edged authenticity to his characters.  These were not the cardboard cut out caricatures of morally righteous men that dominated Hollywood cinema.  Polonsky also wrote a part for a washed-up boxer (Canada Lee, a middleweight boxing champion of the 30’s, who also died shortly after being blacklisted) in BODY AND SOUL, one of the earlier examples of a black character portrayed with such humanity, a man exploited whose feelings and emotions mattered, exactly the kind of challenging work that was viewed as critical of America and raised the suspicions of the HUAC Committee.   

While perhaps impossible to believe today, but in the 30’s and 40’s perhaps one-third of all boxers were Jewish, as they were the ethnic group rising from the slums to get a chance to make something of themselves.  Given such skillful direction by Rossen, along with Polonsky’s blunt cynicism in a screenplay about how the system is fixed, Garfield’s own street swagger makes him born to play boxer Charlie Davis, something of an update on the Clifford Odets Group Theater play The Golden Boy, which tackles a film noir theme of a working class hero who is exploited and eventually brought down by the corrupt forces of capitalism, where the fight promoter Roberts (Lloyd Gough) could just as easily be George C. Scott as the unscrupulous manager Bert Gordon in THE HUSTLER, or Don King during the Muhammad Ali era, as he’s little more than a sophisticated gangster who bankrolls the fights, but takes no chances when it comes to his money, so he fixes the outcome, then makes a killing on the betting odds.  The first boxing movie to shine a light on the sport’s ugly underbelly, the sport is still tainted by this underworld association with gambling, where Las Vegas, a town built by organized crime, continues to set the odds.  It’s this lurid world of gangsters, sleaze, and trouble that provides the backdrop for the film, much of which is told in an extended flashback to happier times when Charlie was just a young punk from the slums of New York, where his family is barely scraping by running a corner candy store, where Charlie is a legend in the neighborhood, known for his quick hands, going against the wishes of his mother (Anne Revere, yes, actually related to Paul Revere) who tells him “That is no way to live, hitting people and knocking their teeth out.”  But his early success draws the attention of Quinn (William Conrad), a local fight promoter with dubious underworld connections, where the dark world of boxing is balanced by the charming innocence of the girl of his dreams, Peg (Lilli Palmer, with just a trace of her native German accent), who could care less about the fight game, but loves him for who he is.  The film won an Academy Award for Best Editing, as the early fight sequences streamed together, one after the other in quick succession, resemble newsreel documentary footage, spinning newspaper headlines, traveling in high speed locomotives from town to town, where his name continually rises from being at the bottom of the boxing posters until he’s one of the featured names on top.  Notoriety brings the opportunity for fame and fortune, where the lure of money and a chance to fight for the title leads him to Roberts, a mob-connected promoter who dictates the terms of each fight, where the money is too good to turn down.  When Peg sees who he’s dealing with, gangsters and hangers-on, and how they “take care” of Shorty (Joseph Pevney), Charlie’s longtime friend from the neighborhood who dies in an accident shortly after being roughed up, she leaves him with all the underworld undesirables, refusing to be part of that world.   

With Roberts, however, Charlie rakes in the dough, becoming noticeably more greedy and ruthless, where there’s plenty of money to spread around and he’s suddenly the king of the world, drawing the attention of opportunist lounge-singer Alice (Hazel Brooks), formerly Quinn’s girlfriend, who loves the finer things in life.  So long as Charlie provides the money train, she’ll play along, grabbing everything she can get, where Charlie’s too wrapped up in the bright lights to see the real picture.  The constant fights, however, and the high living take a toll on him, where a guy can’t fight forever, leading to one final championship fight, seen as the ultimate payday, where like Mildred Pierce (1945) the whole film is one long pre-fight flashback, where his entire life is flashing before his eyes.  For Charlie and his entourage, it’s all about money and success, as that’s the American Dream, but there’s an interesting scene that plays out in his mother’s kitchen, where a Jewish kid from the neighborhood is delivering his mother’s groceries, and when he sees Charlie, he can’t hold back how proud the whole neighborhood is of him, especially at a time when the Nazi’s are killing Jews in Europe.  Interestingly, this 20-second segment was often cut by distributors in the European prints, a practice revealed when the scene was missing from a DVD cut from a European print, but his brief little scene may be the most interesting sequence in the film, suggesting there has to be more to live for than just money, adding a human element that elevates the film.  The role of Charlie was based upon real life Jewish boxer Barney Ross, born Dov-Ber Rasofsky (also depicted in André de Toth’s 1957 film MONKEY ON MY BACK), a world champion in three weight divisions and a decorated World War II Marine veteran who fought back from drug addiction, who also came from a hard scrabble working class neighborhood where he ran around with local toughs.  A rabbi’s son, where his father was the owner of a small vegetable shop in Chicago's Maxwell Street neighborhood, Ross was idolized and respected by all Americans, but he openly embraced his role not only as a winner in the ring, but as a role model for Jews against the virulent anti-Jewish venom displayed by Hitler, displaying the strength and courage of fighting back.  Polonsky’s script includes the heroic view of how others see Charlie, but his view of himself is the larger question, especially when he’s ordered by Roberts to throw the fight.  This ethical dilemma has a staggering impact, beautifully set up by Charlie’s rise through the ranks, where he becomes spoiled by his success, showing arrogance and greed.  The fluid mobility of the fight sequences, especially the climactic fight, so beautifully shot by cinematographer James Wong Howe, was captured on rollerskates as he glided across the ring with a handheld camera, using eight different cameras in all, three on dollies, two handheld, and three on cranes hovering above, creating a dreamlike flurry of motion, where the screams of the audience and the constant flash of light bulbs from the photographers adds an astonishing level of gritty realism, where Garfield was knocked out and injured during the filming of one of his fight scenes, which is exactly what Martin Scorsese loved about the film when describing its impact on RAGING BULL (1980).  But it’s Garfield’s intense personal magnetism and his ability to express human decency, however tarnished, where ultimately he refuses to be humiliated and exploited, that elevate this film to lofty heights, as he paved the way for flawed human characters, including social misfits and outsiders, like Marlon Brando and James Dean, but also fellow New Yorkers Robert de Niro and Al Pacino.

Hud

HUD                            A               
USA  (112 mi)  1963  ‘Scope  d:  Martin Ritt

This world is so full of crap, a man's gonna get into it sooner or later whether he's careful or not.       —Hud (Paul Newman)

A moralistic western about an aging cattle rancher (Melvyn Douglas) and his good-for-nothing son (Paul Newman), with bleak overtones about the careless indifference for the incoming future, distinguished by career-defining performances, where Newman is absolutely brilliant as Hud, the angel who has fallen from grace and leaves behind a dark trail of self-centered contempt for others to wallow in.  Patricia Neal, winning an Academy Award as Best Actress, making much more of the role than was written, is a housekeeper who fills dual roles as the absent mother, respectful and affectionate with widower Douglas and his parentless grandson, while also personifying a sassy seductive temptress in Hud’s eyes.  Beautifully shot on ‘Scope in black & white by cinematographer James Wong Howe, where the most exceptional scenes of the film were shot on location, some outdoors at night, where the incandescent fireflies are each perfectly illuminated as they fly through the air during some of the more intimate conversations, but also over the opening credits, where long shots of a lone vehicle traveling across an empty expanse of a horizon were duplicated by David Lynch in THE STRAIGHT STORY (1999).  The spare music by Elmer Bernstein also perfectly matches the downbeat mood of the film.  Other than the terrific performances, where Douglas (Best Supporting) and Neal won Oscars, while Newman was also nominated, and was robbed, the award going to Sidney Poitier for his upbeat performance in LILIES OF THE FIELD (1963), what immediately stands out is the thematic resemblance to SHANE (1953), including the use of the same small kid from that film who yells out his name at the end, Brandon De Wilde, now grown up to a 17-year old idolizing teenager who follows Hud around everywhere.  In each film, legacy matters. 

This is the first Larry McMurtry novel, Horsemen, Pass By, to be adapted into a movie, and the bare bones setting matched with the lacerating dialogue speaks volumes, as the film continually surprises with worldly cleverness, as Hud is a wise ass who doesn’t give a damn about the past or the future, as all he can think about is today, right here and now.  His smug attitude of defiance and self-certainty is linked to his closest companion, the everpresent bottle, where he continually prances around with an air as if he’s seen it all, been there, done that, and what it all amounts to in the end doesn’t mean squat.  While his aging father agonizes over every decision, filled with the regrets that come with a lifetime of hard times, Hud just chucks it all as a huge waste of time and feels responsible for nothing and nobody but himself.  Easy come, easy go.  While his good looks and charm are enough to get what he wants most of the time, he’s not against using underhanded methods to get the rest.  When the kid follows him around all the time, it flatters him and appeals to his sense of vanity, but he just as easily swats him away like a fly whenever he feels like he’s being a nuisance.  In the same way that John Wayne played a loathsome character in THE SEARCHERS (1956), where his familiarity as the western hero was somewhat confusing to audiences, as it is here with Newman playing such a bitterly repugnant and cynical man without the slightest hint of scruples, yet it’s Paul Newman, one of the most principled men on the planet.  This dual edge may be difficult, especially to younger viewers, as they so easily look up to this guy.  His stud-like confidence and air of nonchalance is the stuff teenagers dream of, yet his despicable attitude toward others is blatantly crude and offensive.  This also explains why this is among Newman’s best performances, as he’s utterly believable in this role, a perfect fit as if he was born to play Hud.  He’s never looked more comfortable onscreen, and for that matter, neither has Patricia Neal.  It’s simply a perfect fit of two minds racing similarly, feeling the same sexual tension, yet reacting to it in such different ways.  As Neal points out, Hud is “hard” on everyone, the kind of guy who goes about everything in the wrong way. 

Melvyn Douglas plays the Raymond Massey character in EAST OF EDEN (1955), a man with a minister’s scruples who painstakingly tries to show the young grandson how to do things the right way, even when it’s hard, in contrast to Hud who always takes the easy road.  Hud drives a flashy pink Cadillac convertible that collects married women and whisky bottles in the back seat, while Douglas is the paternalistic character who has to deal with the most adversity.  He steadfastly insists on abiding by the law and being morally upright.  The good and evil scenario is perhaps a bit too obvious, but Douglas in his gruff voice as a grandfatherly old man is a real scene stealer and speaks from the gut, where it’s hard not to be moved by his life affirming moments onscreen, as he’s the real man who’s seen it all, who’s made something out of nothing, not the pretender like Hud who’s never helped a living soul in his entire life without asking for payment in return.  Douglas’s message of hard love is the message of the film, as he’s given his grandson something that he can take with him wherever he goes, reminding him “Little by little the look of the country changes because of the men we admire,” while Hud pretends to be a bigshot, but he’s always a guy who’s too big for his britches.  In the end, who has the most to show for their lives?  Who leaves the most behind?  Who has actually built a legacy?   Hud is the kind of guy who is all show, who thinks he’s got what he wants, especially with the good looking girls who are actually married to someone else, but in the end it’s all an empty pipedream, where the devastating emptiness couldn’t be more pronounced.  A few more years of hard drinking and he’ll be ready to pull up a chair in Eugene O’Neill’s The Iceman Cometh.  For all of Hud’s bitter cynicism, this is a surprisingly smart and deeply reflective film about ethics, individualism, and what’s become of the frontier spirit that built the West, well written, brilliantly acted, and given such naturalistic performances where these characters literally come alive on the screen, where one can see much of the same blisteringly raw and lonesome material of smalltown Texas used again in yet another major McMurtry work, The Last Picture Show (1971). 

Of note, during the free screening of a perfectly restored 35 mm print of the film at Block Cinema at Northwestern University (where all films winning an Academy Award are being restored on 35 mm prints), family members, including the two youngest daughters of Patricia Neal were present, Lucy and Ophelia, taking questions after the film.  Patricia Neal attended Northwestern University and the family decided to donate all of her letters and personal material to the university for their archives.  Neal was married to British author Roald Dahl, so the kids (there were three older children as well) were raised outside of Oxford in England.  Neither had yet been born at the time of the film HUD, and their mother had a stroke while pregnant with Lucy, remaining in a coma for three weeks, having to relearn how to walk and talk, ending up with a healthy baby but a lifelong limp, working more sparingly after that.  Afterwards, she became an advocate for rehabilitation therapy, where Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center in Knoxville, Tennessee has a wing named after her.  She later divorced and moved to Martha’s Vineyard, where she died at age 84 from lung cancer.