You Need Money to Buy A Gun

Oscar Noir: Week Eleven

Body and Soul

Monday, August 2, 2010

It seemed like this time, Liz would be able to watch a film with me.  She drove up shortly after I did, we walked to the theater, we waited in line, and found seats behind a man who asked us if we would talk during the movie.  We said no, and he said that we could sit there.  I later found out that he either wouldn't have heard us anyway, because he couldn't hear someone trying to bend down to talk in his ear, or because he was loudly reacting to everything on screen himself.  Liz, however, got an emergency call from work before the lights went down, and had to leave. 

Short: "Adventures of Captain Marvel, Chapter Ten: Doom Ship" (1941)

When last we left our heroes, the machine gun security system had begun firing.  Luckily for them, one of the thugs overheard the last number of the combination, knocked out Billy and Betty, entered the number himself, and subsequently got shot.  The other thugs went to the safe and found a map of the location of the lens, instead of the lens itself.  It turns out that Dr. Lang had left his lens back in Egypt.  Billy got up quickly and very ably fought the other two thugs, probably having the confidence of Captain Marvel in him.  He turned into Captain Marvel in order to fly and get the map, and then Billy and Betty showed it to the board members.  The board members divided the map into sections so that they'd all need each other to get back to the lens.  They sailed on a ship that met with nasty weather, and Betty was left on the boat while the others escaped.  Billy went back for her, but the boat started to sink.

Cartoon:  "The Great Piggy Bank Robbery" (1946)

I heart Daffy Duck!  He's a fanduck.  He anxiously awaited his mail until he received his comic book, "Dick Tracy".  As he was reading, he daydreamed that he was Duck Tracy, who had to find out who was stealing everyone's piggy banks.  When he got to the well-marked hideout, he met with a bunch of gangsters, including Batman (dude in the shape of a baseball bat), Neon Man, and Rubber Man.  He solved the case, of course.  he's Duck Tracy!

Feature: "Body and Soul" (1947), screenplay by Abraham Polonsky, directed by Robert Rossen, starring John Garfield, Lilli Palmer, Hazel Brooks and Anne Revere.

• The film was introduced by Phil Alden Robinson, screenwriter for "Sneakers" and "Field of Dreams".  He talked about how Polonsky got the job from Garfield and producer Bob Roberts while he was still working for Paramount, saying that his friend had told him to think of a storyline to pitch in the time span of a two-block walk. 
• Polonsky, whose political views were on the very far left of center, thought of this film as a metaphor for the working man and his fight against the greed of Capitalism.  Polonsky knew, though, that metaphor pictures didn't fare so well in Hollywood, but a sports-as-metaphor-film would probably do well.  For that thought, Robinson is quite grateful, seeing as his baseball film is seen by many as one of the greatest metaphors for life of all time. :)
•  Yay!  William Conrad is back!
• Loved Conrad's line, after his ex-lover tells him that he's getting old: "You could use a new paint job yourself, sister."
• Robinson said that the fight scenes from this movie influenced the cinematography for "Raging Bull".  Although I haven't seen that movie in its entirety, I do see quite a resemblance in the clips I've seen.  No, not just because they're both boxing.  
• Francis Lyon and Robert Parrish won the Academy Award for Film Editing.  I'm surprised that cinematographer James Wong Howe didn't win, since he's the one that wanted to keep the filming fluid by being pushed around the set while on roller skates.
• I did not like Lilli's self-portrait.  I thought that it was creepy.
• Poor Shorty.  Poor Ben.
• I like the way that they tied in Lilli's quote of the poem "The Tiger" with the fight announcer's description of Charley as "a tiger stalking his prey".
• On the way to the theater, I was listening to a couple of guys on the radio talking to a congressperson about his attempts to get playbook sports betting legalized in California.  This would have been a great movie for them to discuss, seeing as the corruption of money and gambling was such an important aspect of it.
• A majority of the people from this film were blacklisted during the McCarthy era.  I really wonder what kind of films could have been created if politics hadn't intruded.  What a shame.
• John Garfield's daughter did a Q&A afterward, but I didn't stay.
• Yes, I do now want to see "Raging Bull".

Great movie, with a great reaction from the audience during the big fight.

Next Noir: "Crossfire"