BEAT THE DEVIL (1953)

Country: Italy

Genre(s): Adventure / Comedy / Crime

Director: John Huston

Cast: Humphrey Bogart / Jennifer Jones / Edward Underdown

Plot

When a team of professional criminals meet up in Italy with plans for a voyage to Africa for a joint Uranium swindle, they encounter a prim-and-proper British couple that unwittingly threatens their plot at every turn.

What I Liked

“Beat the Devil” is a terrific blend of adventure and comedy, making for moments of great fun for the audience.  The film never takes itself too seriously and provides some of film history’s best character actors with the opportunity to portray some wonderfully eccentric and amusing characters (written in part by novelist Truman Capote).  Meanwhile, lead actresses Jennifer Jones and Gina Lollobrigida play Humphrey Bogart’s love interests, both very seductive in very different ways; Jones as the wide-eyed trouble-maker and Lollobrigida as Bogie’s exotic and buxom accomplice.  In short, “Beat the Devil” is pure entertainment, a continent-hopping adventure packed with over-the-top performances, funny sight gags, and entertaining schemes.

What I Didn’t Like

Financed independently by star Humphrey Bogart and some fellow investors, “Beat the Devil” seems to have been shot on a budget that may have been too small for the filmmaker’s ambitious plot.  The film and audio quality is dreadful, making the movie seem like it was shot in 1933 and not in 1953.  With all of the various European, African, and American accents being thrown around, poor sound quality just makes it that much more difficult to follow what is being said.

Additionally, while this film is enjoyable as escapist cinema, it certainly didn’t come across to me as a particularly meaningful, groundbreaking, or influential film.  There are certainly other movies that were not included in the 1001 films in the book I am using as my subject that I feel are more deserving of inclusion than “Beat the Devil.”  It is a good movie, but never at any moment did I feel like it transcended to meriting a place among the greats.

Most Memorable Scene

While it certainly isn’t the most action-packed, funny, or dramatic moment of the movie, the scene where Bogart’s character first meets Jones and her husband is a pleasing encounter accented by dialogue that reveals a great deal about each character involved.  Bogart is at his confident, charming, and duplicitous best while Jones’ character comes off as spectacularly naïve and thirsting for adventure.  Meanwhile her snob of a husband (played with admirable gusto by Edward Underdown) thinly veils his disgust for everything happening behind pretentious manners.  It’s an exceptionally well written and acted scene and really works as the true jumping off point for everything that happens afterwards.

My Rating: 3 out of 5