Beat the Devil

Running Time: about 3'

1The Chelms, EU on the right, a walking stick in his right, JJ on the left, a basket over her left arm, walking towards you down a street. Camera first full shot, then moving in to half shot (waist upwards) , then half portrait (bust upwards). They are followed by a bunch of children, half seen behind their backs. A man they pass turns round to stare at them unpleasently. They turn round (towards each other).

2Portrait shot of six small boys looking very ugly, glaring at them. Mouth movements as if they were about to spit.

3The couple turns again, resuming their walk.

EU:I must say I do resent the way these people stare at us. You'd think they might be going to spit.
JJ: (spits over her left shoulder)
EU:Gwendolen, dash it all!
JJ:Here, it's unlucky to have someone spit at you unless you spit first.
EU:What a filthy superstition,
JJ:(chants:) May yours be defiled!
EU:What's that about?
JJ:These people may be thinking of putting a curse on us, like „may your grandmothers be defiled". That's why I say it first, just in case.
EU:Wherefrom do you get all this stuff?
JJ:My old Spanish nurse told me.
EU:Surely you don't believe it now. You were only a child then.
JJ:She wasn't a child. She was old.
EU:I only wonder why your parents left you in charge of such a dirty, ignorant woman.
JJ:They cared for nothing except to have me off their hands. I told you that. They'd have sold me on the slave market if they hadn't been afraid of the scandal. Besides my father was incompetent. I suppose he just didn't know how to contact the slave people.
EU:I don't believe a word of it. Probably they were very fond of you, really.
JJ:(making as if to spit again)
EU:Stop it, Gwendolen! Don't do it!
JJ:You'll be sorry if you run into bad luck just because you didn't take proper precautions. Suppose when we get to Africa there is a native raising and they are slaughtering all the Whites! (prepares to spit again)
EU:Gwendolen!
JJ:If you don't let me spit I'll just feel like standing here in the street and screeming with terror!
EU:(looking to the left) Stop it, Gwendolen! Look: those men!
JJ:(looks to the left too)
EU:They might be fellow passengers.

4Morley, Marco Tulli, Peter Lorre descending down a street.

Quite a difference, isn't it? Well, ask for the original!...


Quirky, campy, cultish, and somewhat flawed   March 7, 2002
This is a quirky kind of movie with an excellent cast who are not necessarily at their best, with a screenplay by a famed novelist, Truman Capote, directed by a Hollywood legend, John Huston, also perhaps not at their best. Adapted from the novel by James Helvick, Beat the Devil is morphed into something of a self-conscious comedic spoof by Huston of his classic The Maltese Falcon (1941). Here we have Robert Morley instead of Sidney Greenstreet as the greedy ring leader, and Ivor Barnard as the bodyguard with a knife instead of Elisha Cook Jr. the bodyguard with a gun. There is no Mary Astor, but Gina Lollibrigida, an Italian brunette bombshell, and a blonde Jennifer Jones appear as the female leads. Humphrey Bogart again is the star. Peter Lorre returns as a German named O'Hara (part of a running joke about Argentina where so many ex-Nazis became "Irish" settlers after World War II). But Bogey is now 55-years-old, "a middle-aged roustabout"--to quote (twice) from the script, apparently a good-natured Capote dig at the legendary actor--whose tar-stained teeth do so detract from his leading man role. (Gina, his on-screen wife, was 26.) And Peter Lorre has gone from a bug-eyed skinny little perfumed dandy to a fully rounded, tired, middle aged man. Alas, how cruel the camera!

Nonetheless, this is interesting and diverting, full of double entendres and clever put-downs of all sorts, including jabs at marriage, English puffery and neo-Nazis. I understand the movie has overcome the disappointment of its original audience and has become something of a cult classic. I think those fifties matinee viewers probably missed most of the comedy and were offended by the easy adultery of the principals and the improper use of Humphrey Bogart. A year later he was wonderfully cast as Captain Queeg in The Caine Mutiny, where he gave one of his greatest performances.

This is the kind of movie that Old Hollywood likes to watch nostalgically while satirically dissecting the performances, the script, etc., while nonetheless finding nuggets of humor, both intentional and inadvertent. It is, for example, possible to find some hidden meaning in the fact that the rogues, once aboard ship, break out into a lusty rendition of the anonymous chantey, "Blow the Man Down." And it is possible to observe that during the scene in which Jennifer Jones easily beats her husband at chess with her back mostly to the board (afterwards she quips, "Harry's been all out of sorts today. Usually he is a wonderful loser."), that what Bogart really wanted to do was get the scene over with and get back to his cigarettes and the chess games he so loved to play on location. One might also observe that had Peter Lorre been a little younger, and had they made a life of Truman Capote, the former could have played the latter with consummate ease.

Speaking of location, this was filmed in Italy in black and white, clearly on a budget, and as such might be seen as a spaghetti comedy.