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if their story seems completely bonkers, almost like a feverish work of fiction, you ain't heard nothing yet.

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.

This movie is one of the great movies produced during the silent screen era. First, it features a great performance by Paul Robeson who plays a duo role as a con man posing as a preacher and his straight laced twin brother. Second, the movie provides a story in which African Americans are portrayed as complex characters, devoid of the stereotypical depictions typical of the movies of that time. In some respects this movie is a precursor to the 1960 movie Elmer Gantry, especially as it relates to the depiction of the corrupt clergy/con man and how appeals to religion is used to rip off a hapless and clueless public. Further, the story is complex, with a lot of interesting characters, and is well acted. All in all, it is a first class cinematic event.

Its nice to see there was a Black director (Micheaux) with the gumption to take on difficult themes (like a crooked preacher and sexual abuse). Unfortunately his mastery of technique wasn't very good; this movie resembles the sort of thing D.W. Griffith was doing in 1913, both in form and tone (cf. A Girl and her Trust). Cinema had evolved by 1925.There is one great comic sequence that is worth the price of the movie, an over-the-top sermon (on the valley of dry bones) in which the whiskey-guzzling preacher has his congregation in such ecstasy that they do what looks suspiciously like break-dancing. Robeson, usually the good guy, here proves that he is equally adept at playing a sleazebag when required. There is a similar "sermon" in The Blues Brothers that was surely inspired by this one. The comical stereotypes would normally cause us to cry "racism", but this movie was made by and for blacks.Body and Soul explores serious issues and has moments of great fun, but is mainly of historical interest.

Some very good films have been made which could be described as talky. I'm a huge fan of Woody Allen, for example, and most of his films are quite talky. And that works for Woody, largely because his films feature sound. But in a silent film like Body and Soul, long static scenes of characters sitting and chatting tend to be a bit dull.The acting, with a couple of female exceptions, is quite good and quite understated for the era. Paul Robeson, in particular, is very effective as the menacing preacher man--that is, his facial expressions are effective, but his body language is stiff and constricted, as though a chalk X had been drawn on the floor and he'd been directed to stand on it and not move, probably to save the cameraman the effort of moving.A handful of creaky pans are all the camera movement we get in Body and Soul. The camera seems absolutely bolted to the floor. The compositions are crude, with the subject of interest generally being dead-center in the frame. It's all very reminiscent of those old tableaux-style films from two decades earlier, except for the editing.As if to compensate for the lame camera work, Micheaux edited the crap out of this film. I didn't do the count, but I'd guess there were about 2-3 times as many cuts as in a typical non-Russian film from 1925, and that would be great if there were some rhythm to it, some reason for it, but it seemed like Micheaux was cutting for the sake of cutting--awkward pointless jump cuts galore. Some of his choices were downright bizarre, most particularly his rampaging, out-of-control use of cross-cutting. He'd cut away repeatedly from some dramatic scene to show us one of his other characters sitting in a chair someplace completely else, staring, or combing his hair, for no reason I could determine. Perhaps he just wanted to keep a handle on his characters in time, check in and see how everyone was doing. Another thing that annoyed me was that the Yello-Curly character was introduced very early in the film as if he was going to have some important function. He was developed a bit, and then suddenly disappeared without a trace. Disappointing, because he was one of the most interesting characters in the film--and one of the ugliest and oddest-looking humans I've ever seen.Despite the many flaws, this story still could have been interesting. An evil manipulative preacher. A mother who probably subconsciously realizes that her daughter is being raped and abused, but who refuses to acknowledge it, or to even listen to her daughter on the subject of the preacher. Although the preacher and the daughter were not blood-related, there were incestuous overtones. In a way, it kinda reminded me of Laura Palmer's story in Twin Peaks. And then just when the story was becoming gripping and tragic, and I was getting into it, Micheaux pulled the rug out from under me. He ended with the worst kind of hackneyed cliche, the kind of ending that was probably boring and stupid even in 1925.Body and Soul is of some interest, probably, as an historical document, but it's not a good watch, and I can't rate it any higher than a 4/10.4/10

This film is about a Jack-Leg Preacher. A Jack-Leg Preacher is a crooked one. He drinks ands rapes women and then condemns people for his own gain. If that isn't Jack-Legged I don't know what is. Luckily for his the people that go to his church, the whole movie is just a dream, and he may not even be all too Jack-Legged. He may be a nice preacher.