Carne

Wallace Beery is excellent as a poor immigrant wrestler who befriends waif Morley, but cannot keep her from the clutches of crooked promoter Cortez. The movie is badly dated. Many of its themes are now irrelevant. But, the acting is excellent, and a twist ending may surprise today's viewers.

Despite what people say about Wallace Beery, considered misanthropic and difficult to work with by many of his colleagues, the man can ACT!

When watching the film, I realized that if you have great actors in a film, the film works. This film has GREAT actors and a very good story too.

Beery plays a wrestler. Karen Morley has just been let out of prison and he takes her in. Beery plays a "Marty" type of character where he feels no one would ever all in love with him because he is ugly and dumb. But he adores Morley.

Berry does not realize that Morley is just waiting for her boyfriend Ricardo Cortez to be released from jail also. Despite how nice Beery is to her, she just can't fall in love with him. It is clear, even to her, that she is making wrong choices but she can not help herself.

There are some plot twists that I do not want to give away. It is definitely worth watching. Everyone does a great job making this into a Classy Classic.

Flesh is the story of two people who would seem to be unlikely alliances. This is just one example of how films in the golden days of Hollywood center on character and how they relate to each other to further the plot rather than action or violence. There is something natural or humanely real and raw about this film. That's probably why it's called Flesh. But it's not centering on lust or sex, like today's films would, with Flesh for its title. This is about the basic need to give and receive love and acceptance to each other, even in the last place you'd look. If you're looking for an intelligent film about human relationships and don't mind the early 1930s look of black-and-white, this film shows Karen Morley, a vastly underrated actress and largely forgotten today, and Wallace Beery at their best. This could very well be Ms. Morley's finest hour in films. To not see this film would be missing a lesson in love.

Yes, it's a predictable, old fashioned, transparent soap opera, but there are things which keep you interested to the end.

Beery has a difficult task. Being a wrestler (he was no Mr. Universe), holding onto a German accent, and playing a slow witted character. He does it. He seems to be doing his own wrestling (I zoomed in with slow motion), his accent doesn't slip, and being dumb, as hard as can be to be performed..he carries it off with only a bit of his patented "Ain't I the lovable slob" shtick.

Morley nails it as a cynical, world weary woman eager to make the wrong choice in men. Cortez is at his best playing slick sociopaths, and he does it here again. Their performances keep you watching when Beery and his Germanic crew get too schmaltzy

The lead role of a German wrestler (Wallace Beery) in this film is far too dopey for my taste, both in the character and the performance. This leads to some really lame humor especially in the first half of the film, e.g. slopping beer around, banging through a door instead of unlocking it, and accidentally breaking an egg. Karen Morley plays the woman with a past that he naively takes in, and things get a little more interesting when her lover (Ricardo Cortez) shows up. Morley almost always impresses me, and the scenes with just the two of them crackle with the tough banter of 1932, making me wish that they had somehow been more of the focus. As it is, the film tries to do too many things, finally settling on being a wrestling film, and doesn't do anything particularly well. How painfully funny that William Faulkner is listed as one of the three screenwriters, though that gives it yet another link to Barton Fink, which I guess gives it some interest.

As for direction, I found no sign of John Ford visually or tonally here; literally anyone else could have directed this listless melodrama and we would not have noticed the difference, which might explain him trying to remove his credit from the film. Don't get too perked up over the salacious title (and its associated poster) either; it's just a pre-Code attempt to get customers into the theater, and refers not to sex but the wrestler being referred to as a "big hunk of flesh" in passing. Anyway, with a more nuanced, less childlike character this really could have been something, between the love triangle and the organized crime element trying to fix fights, but it's too silly and mildly annoying as it is.