"Body and Soul" is the prototype and likely the best of the boxing films that revealed the corrupt underside of the popular spectator sport in mid-20th century America. It's also a critique of capitalism from a production and acting team that's a literal Who's Who of people blacklisted and hounded by HUAC in the 1950s - John Garfield, Anne Revere, Canada Lee, director Robert Rossen and screenwriter Abraham Polonsky. Noirish and dark, it's an excellent film that I liked except for a few minor quibbles which I'll detail later.

It was produced by Enterprise Studios the short-lived independent film company co-founded by John Garfield after he left Warners, which was also made ""Force of Evil", "Arch of Triump" and Ophuls' "Caught". We follow the story of Charlie Davis, a working-class Jewish boy from the Lower East Side who gets drawn into the world of big-time boxing. Lured by big money and fame, he eventually loses his soul in the process. It's a world of fixes and "taking a dive" run by mobsters and the gambling racket. He gradually drops the girl who loves him, his friends and his ideals in his quest of being a champ and making more money than he ever imagined.

Garfield - whom I always admire - is at the top of his game and gives it his all. So is Anne Revere who plays the mother who doesn't mince words about the moral dangers her son is courting, William Conrad and Lloyd Gough as the crooked manager and the mobster kingpin who controls the matches, Joseph Pevney as his friend who sees the writing on the wall, and Canada Lee as a doomed black boxer who gets used and dumped.

The one performance that just doesn't work is Lilli Palmer as Charlie's first girlfriend, a girl from a poor background who aspires to be an artist. Her sophisticated manner of speaking and bearing, not to mention her German accent poking through, seems so "off" for the role. If this were a 30s film, Ann Sheridan would be perfect; for this era, one could imagine Janet Leigh, Cathy O'Donnell or even a young Susan Hayward fitting the bill. It also doesn't help that Palmer's outshined by Hazel Brooks who plays the Conrad's mistress who sets her sights on Charlie once he enters the big time and is in it strictly in it for the money and the minks. Her "bad girl" is much more interesting than Palmer's "good girl".

The fight sequences are solid and exciting and filmed by the great James Wong Howe, who actually had an assistant push him around the boxing ring while wearing roller skates (!) so he could get good angles of the boxers pummeling each other. The editing is solid (it won an Oscar) and the story never drags. And the famous bluesy theme song - originally penned in 1930 - runs throughout the film. Finally, I'll admit I was disappointed at the ending. If any film ever called for a dark and even morally ambiguous close, it was this. Instead, there's a turnaround where goodness triumphs. But not so for may of the cast and crew who were soon to be screwed by HUAC and the industry.