Body and Soul (1947)
Directed by Robert Rossen
Charley Davis, against the wishes of his mother, becomes a boxer. As he becomes more successful the fighter becomes surrounded by shady characters, including an unethical promoter named Roberts, who tempt the man with a number of vices. Charley finds himself faced with increasingly difficult choices.
7 connections found
View:
7 connections, in both directions
What critics compared Body and Soul to
And its fondest fans can point to exceptions — “Body and Soul,” “The Set-Up,” “The Harder They Fall,” “Raging Bull” and even the first “Rocky.”
It may not be MMA’s “Raging Bull,” but it’s good enough to compare to “Rocky” or “Body and Soul” and not embarrass itself or its sport.
Starkly lit and dizzyingly shot (Howe once strapped on a pair of roller skates to film a boxing match, for 1947's Body and Soul), Seconds fulfills Frankenheimer's vision of a cinematic point-of-view that represents the distorted perspective of madness.
The best boxing movies—Robert Rossen’s “Body and Soul” (1947), John Huston’s “Fat City” (1972), Scorsese’s “Raging Bull” (1980)—have a special redolence that is as easily recognizable, and as richly satisfying, as the leather-and-manure aroma of a stable.
…in fact, you can tick off the storylines from old movie as the “Southpaw” rolls along: A comeback featuring an emotionally scarred, deeply flawed boxer and his young child (“The Champ,” both versions), a death that seriously impacts a fighter’s career (“Body and Soul”), a boxer out to gain self-respect in the ring (“Rocky”); the trainer who must be wooed to work with a fighter he disdains (“Million Dollar Baby”).
And despite speeches about Hope’s graduation from the School of Hard Knocks, he doesn’t function as a bristling working-class hero or antihero, like the fictional protagonists of Golden Boy , Body and Soul , The Set-Up , and Champion.
Advertisement
The primal thrill of great boxing movies - Body and Soul and The Set-Up, Rocky and Raging Bull, Million Dollar Baby and Somebody Up There Likes Me - cannot be denied.
Presaged by the Group Theaters 1939 production of Golden Boy, postWorld War II boxing films like Body and Soul, Champion, and The Set-Up were all about class struggle, specifically the brutality of the capitalist system and the pathos of the proletariat; with few exceptions, Hollywood boxers were tragic figures until Sylvester Stallone changed the game, upping the genres ethnic ante and opting for a Cinderella structure, to create one of the greatest success sagas in American movies.
Whatever you think of real-life boxing, there’s no question that as a movie genre it has brought out some of the best in actors and directors, from “Golden Boy” and “Body and Soul” to “Rocky” and “Raging Bull.”
Robert Rossen's ("Lilith"/"Body and Soul") The Hustler filmed in black and white and Cinemascope plays as a rich paean to the low-life pool players, dank pool halls and its pool sharks.
Fortunately Rossen went on to make the much more satisfying The Hustler .
It was like Monk's mesmerizing expansion and contraction of time in his version of ''Body and Soul.''