Many years ago, I had the misfortune to have my hearing go awry for a couple of months. I have always loved music even more than movies or books, so it was especially devastating to have songs I knew every note of turn into these nightmarish cacophonies. Still, I forced myself to listen to music in hopes I could relearn how to hear it properly. I don’t think I’ll even forget when the finally happened. It was in the middle of “Pretty Ballerina” by The Left Banke. I cried with relief.
So I found myself able to empathize a bit with Tony Curtis in 1952’s Flesh and Fury, where he plays a formerly deaf boxer who now struggles with the ocean of noise that is the big world following successful inner ear surgery. People who have always had decent hearing don’t realize how much more of that sensation is in the mind than in the ears. There’s all manner of things we unconsciously filter out when we are listening.
About half of the picture takes place while Curtis is still deaf. He is fighting on the lowest rungs of the circuit before he gets noticed by a formerly prestigious manager (Wallace Ford) and gets some arm candy in the form of Jan Sterling.
Ford is a joy to watch in this film, as a good man still struggling with the death in the ring of his last fighter. This is one of those characters I wanted to spend more time with. Actually, I wish I knew him and his wife (played by Connie Gilchrist) in real life.
To the script’s credit, Sterling’s role as a gold-digger has more nuance that I would have expected. In the beginning, she genuinely likes Curtis while not bothering to hide her motivations. When he asks her when he’ll see her again, she tells him she will once he fights again and wins more money. They both smile. She also gets a wry observation in when their relationship changes after he regains his hearing: “I think he heard me better back when he was deaf.”
The uglier side of her character emerges once Mona Freeman enters the picture. Freeman is a journalist who immediately warms to Curtis when she goes to write a piece about him. Curtis soon forms a bond with her that is deeper than the more carnal thrills provided by Sterling. It doesn’t hurt that Freeman’s architect father was deaf, so she knows how to sign and is very comfortable with the hearing impaired.
I just realized I haven’t said anything about Curtis, and he is stellar in this movie. His performance felt so natural, and he conveys so much without talking, that I honestly thought he had said some lines when he was deaf. He also handles himself very well in the boxing scenes, which look genuinely brutal. I believed him as a boxer and as a deaf man.
Many reviews call out Flesh and Fury for being melodrama, which I guess it is. But I never thought I would see a boxing movie that was so good-natured, nor a movie about deaf people that was so sensitive without being patronizing. This is movie about little moments, like Curtis feeling a record cabinet’s vibrations, so he can dance with his girl. This is a nice movie, with mostly nice people who I just wanted to see happy. In the end, what’s so bad about that?
Dir: Joseph Pevney
Starring Tony Curtis, Jan Sterling, Mona Freeman, Wallace Ford
Watched on Kino Lorber blu-ray