Above: Billy Dannruether (Bogart) tries to understand the bizarre mental state of the beautiful and perceptive Mrs. Gwendolyn Chelm (Jennifer Jones). But he's not having much luck.
"The only thing standing between you and a watery grave is your wits, and that's not my idea of adequate protection."--a typical line from this movie
"Beat the Devil" is a movie that came out in late 1953. It was a major flop at the box office. Rediscovered in the late sixties, thanks to the Humphrey Bogart cult in popular American culture, it's now rightfully accorded its status as an enjoyable cult film.
The first time I saw it I would have agreed with the audience of 1953/54. This was no Huston/Bogart film as I had seen before. There was very little action and just a threadbare plot about a bunch of eccentric people who are headed to British East Africa to get their hands on some land that is supposed to have a store of uranium ore buried under the ground. The movie's half over before they even leave a tiny Italian port via a broken-down scow to head toward Africa. Most of the movie consists of people talking to one another in cafes or on shipboard or in hotel rooms and Italian plazas. The Leading Man seems more interested in ordering one more double Scotch at the ship's saloon than in getting tough or outwitting the criminals. The criminals seem smart, but also more petty and philosophical than dangerous. And the beguiling leading ladies are not femme fatales; more like femme eccentrics. The blond is a head case with a talent for fantastic lies and over imaginative speculations. The brunette can't decide if she wants to seduce the blond's husband--a stuffy British twit-- or just scamble his nerves for the fun of it.
And what about getting to Africa and snatching the uranium? Even when they get to Africa they just have a culture clash with a local Berber bigshot, who first thinks they are spies and then lets them off when the Bogart character tells him he knows Rita Hayworth and Rita digs guys like him. And then it's everybody back on a boat to Italy. No wonder audiences in 1954 thought this was disappointing. The campaign for the movie called it "the biggest and boldest adventure of them all". The title "Beat the Devil" brings to mind feats of derring-do and desperate and dramatic situations. Yet the flick ends with everybody back where they started.
What the heck is this, I first thought back at fifteen when I saw this movie.
It boasts a wonderful cast including Jennifer Jones as a pretty and dotty prevaricator, Robert Morley as a comic bully , Peter Lorre as an apparent ex-Nazi who now goes by the name of "O'Hara" and an enticing Gina Lollabrigidia as Bogart's wife.
Those familar with writer/film director John Huston's work already know that one of his favorite themes is how the lure of money and power can corrupt people and leave the "best-laid plans" they have with their co-horts shattered by paranoia and double-crosses. You can see this theme running through the very first film he directed, the classic "The Maltese Falcon" (1941) with Bogart's Sam Spade mixed up with a pack of people grasping for control of the ultinate "McGuffin", a centuries old black-bird statue. Then we have "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" (1948) with Bogart , Tim Holt and the director's father, Walter, playing down-and-outers who go-for-the-gold in the mountains in Mexico and wind up in a major falling out filled with dramatic irony.
Huston's noirish "The Asphalt Jungle" (1950) with Sterling Hayden, Sam Jaffe and Jean Hagen follows a similar theme: a gang goes after a fortune in jewels and bad things happen, sometimes without any rhyme or reason. (A gun accidently goes off when its tossed against a wall near a safe and shoots one of the burglers. Why? Who knows? Suffice to say it wasn't in the plan.) And this theme reaches a well-honed peak in Huston's second magnum opus ( after "...Sierra Madre") "The Man Who Would be King"(1975). This was a Rudyard Kipling story Huston wanted to do originally with Bogart and Clark Gable and later Paul Newman and Robert Redford. It ultimately pits close pals and ex-British/Indian Army regulars Michael Caine and Sean Connery against each other after they try to hustle the officials of a remote Afghan kingdom into regarding them as kings (and Connery as a super-normal reincarnation of none other than Alexander the Great!)
All these movies have something in common: men (and sometimes women) reach for something that doesn't belong to them and their efforts are futile. They may be ambitious and professional, but they have bitten off more than they can chew. Feeling themselves ill-used by society, they are blind to the limitations and character flaws that make up a great deal of their destiny. Only the character of the old prospector Howard (Walter Huston) in "Sierra Madre" sees fully how futile his dreams are and enjoys the irony of losing a fortune with one of cinema's great fits of uncontrollable laughter. The joke is ultimately on him and he knows it, and so do any members of the audience sharp enough to know they can't often cheat fate.
Which brings us back to "Beat the Devil". What I didn't realize fully the first or second time I viewed this was that the fun in this 90 minute movie comes from the great dialouge (by Huston and Truman Capote, who made it up day by day apparently) and the shaggy-dog qualities in the story. It's not a movie to savor for some great theme nor wondeful story arc: it's a movie that spoofs the movies Huston himself had already made (and was still to make) about fate and the best-laid plans of grasping people going awry. But this time it's played for laughs and their fun is in the characters actions, not doom nor great despair.
Watching Robert Morley's performance as Mr. Petersen, the ringleader of the criminals, is worth watching the film for alone! Morley is a down-at-the-heels criminal; maybe he's got no ethics but Petersen still is a English gent making an gallant, old school attempt to keep up his dignity despite the company he keeps. Add to that Peter Lorre (O'Hara) and his little speeches on the nature of time and loyalty amongst crooks, and add to it the behind-the-dumb-husband's-back romance of Bogart and Jones' characters and it's darn near a classic.
The closest I think to the modern equivilent are some scenes from the recent "Ocean's 11" films--I'll bet Stephen Soderberg has seen this movie more than once--and the "John Dortmunder" novels of Donald Westlake ("The Hot Rock", Bank Shot", "Don't Ask", et al )
Trust me, if this is a movie you've seen before and scratched your head about the whole seeming jumble , please go and rent it again if you can on DVD .
Below, a weblink to a good article on the movie:
http://www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/01.29.98/beat-devil-9804.html
No comments:
Post a Comment