Flesh and Fury

I suppose you might call Flesh and Fury a message movie. It is all about deafness, sympathy, greed, etc., and every line is loaded--ready to go off in the direction of some great truth. Tony Curtis, as "Dummy" Callan--a deaf boxer who regains his hearing only to lose it again--sums up the moral in one sentence: "I don't feel different." That is the great truth then: deaf people are not sub-human after all.

By the standards generally used in judging movies whose purpose is to argue a social moral, Flesh and Fury is particularly unstimulating. The symbols are painfully obvious: Jan Sterling, as the money-sucking girl friend, represents all who are callous and indifferent towards the naturally afflicted; Mona Freeman, as a reporter and a member of a wealthy family, represents the sympathetic and the understanding. These two struggle insipidly for Callan's love, the outcome never in doubt. Virtue at length triumphs, not through its own strength, but through the machinations of the plot.

Though a poor picture so far as its moral purpose is concerned, Flesh and Fury has moments of excellent action. The ten minutes or so devoted to boxing scenes almost lift the picture out of triteness.

There are two such scenes, and they are magnificent. The camera moves hectically from ringside to closeup--pausing now to depict a face reeling under the blows of a blurred glove, a kidney being jabbed, or an eye being gouged, then jumping to the front-row seats for a glimpse of Callan's anguished trainers, and returning to the bout again. Long experience in shooting fights has taught moviemakers how to film such scenes with maximum effectiveness.

Despite this technical excellence, I find it difficult to recommend Flesh and Fury. Ten minutes of fisticuffs is hardly worth the hour and twenty minutes of sentiment and moralizing that goes on between bouts.