La belle de Paris

FOX had nothing but the finest talent in the 1940's and 1950's. This is a prime example in taking a Hemingway short story and expanding it to an 85 minute movie while still being faithful to the source.

John Garfield is very good as the American jockey stranded in post WWII Italy where he's raising his son and staying one jump ahead of his past. Lovely Micheline Prelle, who meets him in Paris, plays her role perfectly and will make us understand why women will go for a guy like Garfield and leave guys like you and me in the dust. (You, anyway!)

A strong plus is the look we get at Europe (mostly Paris) as it was 58 years ago. I've seen Paris many times, but it was more beautiful, more itself, less overrun with tourists, in 1964. Even more-so in 1950. One of the great benefits of old movies.

John Garfield is an American jockey in Europe. After he double-crosses Luther Adler and wins a race, he and his son, Orley Lindgren, flee north to Paris, where he meets Micheline Presle (who is still alive at the age of 100 as I write this). He likes her, she despises him, but they bond, somewhat, over the boy. But Adler follows them to Paris. He wants the money he lost on Garfield not throwing the race, and some more.

Based on the Hemingway story "My Old Man", it's standard Garfield noir for the period, but brightly lit by cinematographer Joseph Lashelle, whose crew shot the final steeplechase very well. Director Jean Negulesco gets some atmosphere in, largely thanks to second-unit shooting in Europe.

Beautiful movie about horses and that magnificent, magnificent John Garfield; I can't get enough of it.

I think that if John Garfield had lived he might have gone abroad as did so many of his peers did in the McCarthy era and such projects as Under My Skin might have had followups. The film is based on an Ernest Hemingway story about an exiled jockey living in Europe with his son, father and son being played by Garfield and Orley Lindgren.

It might have started out as a Hemingway story, but a seasoned film buff will recognize bits from Broadway Bill/Riding High, National Velvet, and The Champ. Garfield and Lindgren have to beat it out of Italy as he crosses up gangster Luther Adler and they flee to Paris. Where they take up with songstress Michelline Prelle and look for work, but Adler follows them there with an offer he thinks they can't refuse.

The shame and stigma for Garfield having been a cooperating witness at the HUAC hearings is roughly parallel to his role as a crooked jockey. Under My Skin is as much an explanation film for Garfield as On The Waterfront was for Elia Kazan. I think there's more Garfield/Jean Negulesco the director than Hemingway in this, Hemingway was never as sentimental as this film is.

Still it's not a bad one and I think Garfield may have done more projects like this had he lived.

This is a much underrated and almost unknown and forgotten crown jewel among the Hemingway screenings, and it's an odd one out for Hemingway, as it's an unusual character prying into the depths of a heel fighting it out with destiny for his honour, which he has been losing all his life. We never get to know anything about his background, why he can't talk of America, let alone go back, and Micheline Presle, who appears to know all about him throughout from the beginning, treats him like poison. It's the boy that saves everything, he is the only thing he has to live for, and it's for him he finally risks his life to save his honour. At least he saves one of them.

Micheline Presle makes a very convincing appearance as one of Hemingway's most hard-boiled women, out-shadowing even Ava Gardner by her hard experience and relentless attitude, which only the boy can soften and only by his absolute honesty of innocence. Even when the father hits him and treats him with flamboyant treachery, the boy continues to believe in him and trust him, and the departure scene at the station, when he sends the boy away by train, with its following scenes, is heart-rending and the apex of the film, culminating with Micheline's singing performance, almost as poignant as Edith Piaf. This is a great film in its dire human realism, the story of a greater conflict and more difficult battle than any war, of a man struggling with impossible odds for an impossible honour out of reach, and how he gets through with it after all.

John Garfield is almost even better here than in "The Breaking Point" on Hemingway's "To Have and Have Not", the better and later version than Bogart's, here he plays an equally doubtful character posed against impossible odds, but here the addition of the boy and that relationship suddenly gives John Garfield's dubious character an ocean of interesting depth.