La belle de Paris

Back during the era when there was a Production Code, folks who were wicked HAD to be punished and the leading men had to be nice guys. That's just the way it was. However, over the years, this code began to ease just a bit--and in the case of "Under My Skin" it seems to have eased a lot, as the leading character, Dan (John Garfield) is with barely a single redeeming quality through much of the movie.

The film begins with Dan and his young son running away from bookies in Italy. It seems that he double-crossed one of them (Luther Adler) and now he and the kid are hiding out in France. Always looking for an angle, Dan is looking for that one score to make it big...but at heart he's just a cheap hustler. His son, on the other hand, doesn't yet realize the sort of guy his dad is...but you know sooner or later he will.

For once, Dan has a chance to do the right thing. He's gotten a horse who is a winner and he can take this horse to the top...if it wasn't for the bookie. This scum has finally caught up with Dan and threatens to kill him if he doesn't throw his next race. What's Dan to do-- take it safe or work, finally, for some self-respect?

Despite being a very downbeat film, this is a very good movie. It's quite unique and the acting is excellent. My only gripes are technical. Although I really liked this film, I was NOT impressed by having Garfield play a jockey. Sure, he's not exactly tall but he's way too tall and bulky to be believable. It's a shame, as he was otherwise excellent in the film. Additionally, some of the scenes are sloppy--such as the opening scene where the guy running is pretty obviously NOT Garfield and the horse race scenes where Garfield is clearly NOT riding a real horse but is acting against a rear- projected bit of footage (in a few, however, such as the BIG race near the end, it's done MUCH better). For these reasons, I couldn't score the film a bit higher--but it still is well worth seeing. Just don't expect a feel good film!!

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.

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.

Based on Ernest Hemingway's short story, "My Old Man," the 1950 screen adaptation directed by Jean Negulesco, "Under My Skin," is a passably entertaining film; unfortunately, the film's prime asset, star John Garfield, made only two more movies after this before his early death at age 39. Garfield is widowed expatriate Dan Butler, a jockey with shady dealings and an unhealthy relationship with a corrupt gambler played by Luther Adler. Actually, Butler is not the nicest guy, and his relationships with his son and girlfriend are not healthy either. Garfield's physique does not make him physically convincing as a jockey, although his tough guy persona is ideal for the caddish part he plays. His rough and neglectful treatment of his son, Joe, is borderline abusive; he drags the kid through a life in hotels, leaves him alone and hungry, and pushes him away emotionally and physically. Butler's tough girlfriend, played by Micheline Presle, is overly tolerant of his loutish behavior; while inexplicably melting for Butler, Presle sings French ballads in a nightclub, which does little but further slow already slow scenes.

Filmed on the 20th Century Fox back lot, Negulesco over uses obvious rear projection and long shots of doubles on location to suggest the story is set in France, where Garfield, Presle, and Adler are definitely not; unfortunately, the efforts to fake Paris create an artificial backdrop to some unconvincing drama. The personal relationships also seem fake; Presle's tender feelings for Garfield in particular fail to convince, and the son, played by Orley Lindgren, has the looks and demeanor of having grown up with another father entirely. When Garfield utters "I love you," to Presle the phrase seems to have popped out of nowhere, and the son's persistent blindness to his father's faults strains credibility.

Despite his miscasting and difficulty expressing warmth, Garfield owns the film, and he is the primary reason to see it. The horse-racing scenes are fairly good, although Garfield's training of a difficult horse into a winner largely occurs off screen. Other than the racing, the pace is leisurely, and Adler and his henchmen bark softly and scuff up, rather than rough up. Despite the film's flaws, Garfield is always worth watching, and his unlikeable Dan Butler fits him well.

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.