Body and Soul

Charley and Alice

A lightly fictionalised account of the life of boxer Barney Ross, 1947’s Body and Soul is often described as the best boxing movie ever made. While that’s highly contestable – there’s not much actual boxing in it, compared to The Set-Up or Raging Bull, for instance – it is undoubtedly one of the best movies set in the world of boxing (not quite the same thing). The original intention was to tell Ross’s story as a straight biography, but that was dropped when Ross’s heroin habit became common knowledge. And so John Garfield here plays Charley Davis, a boxer reflecting on his life – a spectacular rise from the mean streets and gifted amateurdom … Read more

The Breaking Point

Leona and Harry on his boat

Released in 1950 two years before the death of its star, John Garfield, aged only 39, The Breaking Point played to all Garfield’s strengths – he’s the tough guy military veteran attempting to maintain masculine dignity in a world that doesn’t want him any more. It was his favourite role. Harry Morgan (Garfield) is scraping along in the business he set up after he returned from the Second World War, chartering boats out for fishing and whatever comes along. Times are hard and he owes everyone money, and so, in hock to his eyeballs, a disappointment to his loving wife (Phyllis Thaxter), bossed by an offstage father-in-law dangling a job with his successful company, … Read more

The Postman Always Rings Twice

Frank and Cora

Talking of twice, there are two good reasons why reviews of the movie The Postman Always Rings Twice almost invariably mention the book’s author, James M Cain. Cain’s name has no real resonance today, but in 1934 his book was a Fifty Shades of Grey shade of famous and had made a celebrity of the author. As a grown-up, sentient member of the public you had to take a position on the book – you’d read it, you’d read a review of it, or you’d taken ostentatiously decided not to read it. Love it or loathe it, you couldn’t ignore it. The second was the opening credits to this 1946 screen version, which go … Read more

Force of Evil

Joe and Doris at a club

Though tricked out in an almost offhand way like a film noir, Force of Evil is actually something else entirely, an old school Greek tragedy, featuring a noble hero cursed by a fatal flaw in his character, one which will first be exposed and then cause his downfall. John Garfield plays Joe Morse, a lawyer working for the boss of an illegal numbers racket. As the curtain goes up on a story that isn’t always that easy to follow, boss Ben Tucker (Roy Roberts) is trying to turn his business legit, but first he wants to bankrupt all of the smaller rivals also running numbers rackets so he can come through the other … Read more