BEAT THE DEVIL

US, 1953, 89 minutes, Black and white.
Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, Edward Underdown, Ivor Barnard, Marco Tulli, Bernard Lee.
Directed by John Huston.

Beat the Devil has excellent credentials. It was written by Truman Capote years before In Cold Blood. It sparkles with verbal wit all the way through. It was directed by John Huston who had directed Humphrey Bogart in several films including the celebrated Maltese Falcon as well as Key Largo and his Oscar-winning performance in The African Queen. Bogart, who had only a few years to live after this film, is very good in a variation on his African Queen character – with a touch more sophistication.

The film has a gallery of rogues who are on a small ship bound for Africa, allegedly to sell vacuum cleaners along with a British couple played by Jennifer Jones and Edward Underdown. However, everything is not as it seems – all are after land with uranium in Africa. There are various complications, double-dealings, con tricks.

The film boasts an excellent international cast with a blonde Jennifer Jones in support of Bogart as well as Italian Gina Lollobrigida. Robert Morley and Peter Lorre are other members of the gang.

While the style of filming is that of the 1950s, the plot, the tricks and Capote’s dialogue are still worthwhile. John Huston made Moulin Rouge at this particular time and then went on to make Moby Dick and Heaven Knows, Mr Allison.

1. What did the title mean? What overtones did it have? How appropriate for this film?

2. How would you describe the tone of the film? How would you characterise the atmosphere of the film? Why? The use of black and white photography, music, squalid settings?

3. What was the genre of this comedy-adventure-parody- satire? How effective was the film in these areas? Why?

4. How did the film communicate its satiric points? By the genre? By the types and the characters? By their visual and verbal presentation? By the ironic situations? By the presentation of snobbery? How successful was this in idea? in execution? Is this a film where execution equals the ideas or not? Why?

5. How important was Humphrey Bogart as the central character? How much did the character rely on Bogart impressions and audience response to these? Previous Bogart films? villainy? The Americanism of Bogart? His nobility and yet his greed, his toughness and gentleness? His humour and his seriousness? What kind of character was Bitty? Was he a well drawn character? What were his endearing qualities? What was his villainy? How central was he to the rest of the film, and to the other characters? Why?

6. How did he contract with Maria? How typical an Italian character was Maria? The personality of Gina Lollobrigida? Maria’s importance for the film? her presence in the port? why she had married Bitty, why she was fascinated with Chelm, why she was fascinated with things English and snobbery? How realistic her character? Romantic? Idealistic? How humorous a character was she for the film?

7. How did she contrast with Gwendolyne? A blonde Jennifer Jones, stupid, telling lies? Her snobbery? The points behind her snobbery? Why was she at the port? Her relationship to Chelm? Love? Her love for Bitty in romantic hero film type? Her unreality? What did she add to the film?

8. Chelm himself? how were the English being satirised in him? What points about the English? How humorous was this? The attempt to kill him? His final vindication?

9. What did the film have to say about supporting characters? Peterson as personified by Robert Morley and his style? What he stood for ? Greed and pomposity? Duplicity? the major, small and murderous? Julius O'Hara and the satire on Peter Lorre, Germanic and Irish? The typical Italian villain? What did these villains all add to the film? Would it have been different without them?

10. The visual presentation of the seedy world of the port, uranium greed, the ship, the Arabs etc.? The point behind this? (More telling in the fifties than now?)

11. What did the film have to say about greed and double cross? The importance of the car going over the cliff, the attempts at murder, the changing of loyalties?

12. Comment on the irony of the whole film and its impact on audiences their laughing at villainy, at snobbery, at fickleness? To this extent how successful a satiric comedy was the film?