Beat the Devil (1954)

Save your money for something good and enjoyable

Just what I expected

Good movie but grossly overrated

This is a tender, generous movie that likes its characters and presents them as real people, full of flaws and strengths.

This is the kind of film made by a film director of solid reputation like John Huston when they want to hang out with the rest of the guys in the Hollywood-hood and spend their off hours partying in exotic locations. Huston and Truman Capote ultimately tinkered with the screenplay together, a pair of self-indulgent jokesters, and however inspired, their efforts put together an offbeat little gem with a storyline that entertains at every complicated plot twist. It's a wacky story about a group of con artists each to a one demonstrating various levels of cunning and idiocy. Meeting up together in the scenic isolation of some southern Italian port town, they're all obsessed with getting to some unnamed country in British East Africa where they plan to grab for themselves a monopoly in uranium deposits. This crew consists of Billy Dannreuther and his wife Maria played by Humphrey Bogart and Gina Lollabrigida. Dannreuther is the seasoned soldier of fortune type, a wanderer of the world always looking for ways to make a million. Bogart, a consummate professional, would never put in a lazy performance but here he shows little enthusiasm and just looks weary and impatient. This, however, actually serves well for the character, Dannreuther being a man who's seen it all and takes nothing for granted. His Italian wife all bosoms, curves and pouty lips is an Anglophile obsessed with all things English from tea in the afternoon to a hunger for the rolling lawns of titled English estates. The couple are in uneasy league with a quartet of ne'er-do-wells, the key members being Peterson, played by Robert Morley, Ivor Barnard as Major Jack Ross, a loony homicidal fascist who believes Hitler and Mussolini had the right idea, and Peter Lorre as Julius O'Hara. O'Hara, so obviously a brand of O'Hara that Ireland never saw, pridefully expresses that O'Hara is a very respectable surname in Chile. He counteracts Dannreuther's frustration with the complications of their scheme by emphasizing what every con man needs to keep in the forefront: "To seem trustworthy is no more important than to be trustworthy." Time has not been kind to Peter Lorre who only age 49 in this movie looks significantly older since his appearance in Huston's 1941 "The Maltese Falcon" twelve years previous. We get a blonde Jennifer Jones of all things, apparently an effort to give her the vibes of the blonde noir babe practiced at duplicity. She's Gwendolen Chelm married to a stock-character British male, a member of the prissy, tight-laced breed, humorless and outwardly dull-witted. Chelm breaks into crisis mode when he finds he didn't pack his hot water bottle. The group of disreputables are waylaid on some North African shoreline after their African bound boat sinks, and taken in for interrogation and detention by horseback marauding Arabs and their leader. These turn out to be not a tribe of terrorists in the modern sense but terrifyingly stupid and intimidating. After Gwendolen rambles on in protest over their detainment, the chief of this band simply points out that "In my country a female may at least know her words are not heard." He may not care what a woman has to say but he certainly is interested in what they look like. It turns out he suffers from a swooning obsession with actress Rita Hayworth, his dream girl whom he'd like to add to is harem. Whichever one of this crew scores the riches at the end of the game doesn't really matter. It's a winner for the viewer.

Just desserts are dished out with glee in this 'crime drama'. Each character is built up to be disliked enough that when the hammer comes down on them, the result are hilarious. No character ever rises above 'amoral' and most are just downright sleazy, so when each little plot is foiled, it's just more icing on this cake of a movie. The supposed main plot of the movie is vague, and takes a back seat to the characters who slowly sink in the quicksand of their behavior throughout the movie. Humphrey Bogart plays the 'arranger' for a quartet of the most inept criminals in movie history. How they got together, no one knows. What they did before: who cares? What their brilliant caper is? Something about uranium and Africa I think. None of that matters. What matters is the expressions on their faces as one by one their ideas fail, their schemes implode, their Machiavellian machinations collide like bumper cars at the amusement park. They discuss murder, robbery, infidelity with banter lighter than air. Each of the actors plays their parts perfectly straight, one has to wonder if any of them were clued in on this prank noir. This is John Huston to the hilt, no holds barred, no character flaw left unexploited. A must see for any Huston fan. People that take their movies too seriously, may not 'get it', so your mileage may vary.

A very pleasing JOHN HUSTON directed movie, back when great actors and dialog were the real special effects. The cast is stellar and wonderfully over the top - a cornucopia of various European accents. Ivor Barnard is particularly hilarious.Humphrey Bogart looked slightly jaded. His character wasn't too well etched. And the film isn't very cleverly put together and they seemed to be working on a low budget - most of the scenes have been shot indoors.But even then, it was a pleasure to watch. The dialog by Truman Capote is hilarious (we are at sea in more ways than one :) ) and politically incorrect.

Humphrey Bogart is anything but suave. He looks silly with a feminine silk scarf beneath a dress shirt and blazer. He is also stiff as a comedic actor although I understand that he is the straight man who never utters a humorous line. The others are intended to be funny, but they don't pull it off too well, especially Robert Morley and Peter Lorre, who have been in comedies but are more believable as bad guys.Jennifer Jones is great, only because she was born in Tulsa, OK and does a fine job with a British accent, something most actors couldn't do in 1953. Still, she is not a comedic actress and that contributes to the mis-casting and the ultimate flatness of the film.The plot is weak and disorienting. I watched this film during a day-long TCM tribute to Bogart, and fortunately, it was played during my lunch hour. Perhaps, in eating lunch, I missed the point and the comedy, but I think NOT! The remainder of the films were excellent, however, I have to concede that I've seen these Bogart films many times, the most often being 'The Caine Mutiny' which I had to watch in college for an ROTC class and have been hooked on this film since. I continue to see something new with each viewing.