A Film Canon

Whereas earlier films treat boxing as a comic, sentimental or romantic counterpart to gangsterdom, Body And Soul reduces it to a facet of big business, such that the heroic self- sufficiency of protagonist Charlie Davis (John Garfield) is only undermined by his victories. As a result, his masculinity is both viscerally exaggerated, in so many gestures of over- compensation, and transplanted to the various fist-fights that occur outside the ring, producing a memorably volatile performance that, combined with his predecessor's hulking, sweating debilitation, condenses big business to a blood clot; a malign, unbearable presence that prevents the healthy circulation of celebrities within the neighbourhoods from which they emerge. In the process, every relationship - romantic, maternal, professional - is subsumed into Davis' relentless, desperate flirtation, itself condensed into the empty exchange of the title 'champion', evoking a characteristically noir estrangement and engulfment of the individual. Hence the (one extended) match that frames the narrative, in which cinematographer James Wong Howe's use of roller skates and a hand-held camera robs the ring of its reassuring co-ordinates, replacing them with an vertiginous ambience.