Flesh

Flesh (1932)

Runtime: 96 minutes

Directed by: John Ford

Starring: Wallace Beery, Ricardo Cortez, Karen Morley, Jean Hersholt, John Miljean

From: MGM

This will be the first of two reviews I post here today... the other will be in a few hours:

A John Ford movie featuring professional wrestling? Sign me up!

It was only recently that I had even heard of this motion picture; thus, when I noticed it would be playing on Turner Classic Movies early this past morning, it was DVR'ed as I was genuinely curious between the plot, the cast and the director. It was more curious than expected: Wallace Beery played a pro wrestler named POLAKAI (his first name wasn't given, so he must be in the industry) in Germany who is a good guy that loves drinking beer from a beer stein; yet he is a blockhead and amazingly naive. Henceforth, it was easy for him to be manipulated by blonde lady Laura who was just released from incarceration; a different twist is that Laura herself tries to get on a better path but she herself is manipulated by a real A-hole named Nicky, who she knew from the past.

While slow at times, overall it was good, with a different sort of story. The movie had various faces I'd seen before; Wallace Beery, Karen Morley and Ricardo Cortez all delivered solid performances in their roles. A key plot point is that most of the lead's family emigrates from Germany to the United States... if you know history, 1932 in hindsight would have been a great year to leave The Rhineland! In the final bout, there's an actual pro wrestler from the time: Wladek Zbyszko, who had an even more famous wrestling brother that actually was the World Champion at one point: Stanislaus. This was in fact where Larry Zbyszko got his wrestling surname from decades later. In addition, I got a hearty laugh from this movie stating that it was only in America where pro wrestling was predetermined.

One last note: while I've never experienced Barton Fink, I understand a key subplot is the eponymous character writing “a Wallace Beery wrestling picture.” So the story goes, neither Coen had any knowledge of this film and that idea was just coincidentally a movie that was actually made.