Beat the Devil Movie Review

This was Bogie's and Huston's sixth and final film together. Huston and Capote intended it to be an Italian-style satire of The Maltese Falcon, but audiences of the ‘50s failed to appreciate it on that level. Television viewers and revival house devotees finally got the joke. It's a kick to watch and so different from the studio films Bogie and Huston made in the ‘40s. NO ONE receives a flattering gaze from cinematographer Oswald Morris, and Jennifer Jones is not treated like a delicate china doll or an unearthly creature as she is in most of her other pictures. Robert Morley (who was in The African Queen with Bogie) is Petersen, a part clearly designed for Sydney Green-street, and Peter Lorre, in his fifth and final movie with Bogie, appears as O'Hara! At one point, Bogie, Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Morley, Lorre, Edward Underdown, and Ivor Barnard are hauled into the police station and only released when Bogie promises the officer that he will arrange for him to meet his idol, Rita Hayworth! Great fun. Based on the novel by James Helvick.

1953 89m/C Humphrey Bogart, Gina Lollobrigida, Peter Lorre, Robert Morley, Jennifer Jones, Edward Underdown, Ivor Barnard, Bernard Lee, Marco Tulli; D: John Huston; W: John Huston, Truman Capote; C: Oswald Morris. VHS, LV, Closed Caption