Billy Dannreuther: “Can’t you get it through your heads that the population down there has trained noses? They can smell a uranium deal like a cat smells fish.”
What would seemingly have been a massive hit crime film with an utterly impressive cast, Beat the Devil (1953) instead became a most bizarre experiment. With unhappy director John Huston having thrown the script out the window, he brought in the legendary Truman Capote to then help him co-write the story based upon British journalist Claud Cockburn’s novel of the same name at the very last minute. With a cast already assembled in Italy, names like Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida (in her first English language movie), Peter Lorre and others were simply sitting there and waiting to get started.
Also loosely inspired to become something in the realm of Huston’s The Maltese Falcon (1941), instead, Capote decided to make it more of a spoof of that picture, doing re-writes each and every evening for the next day’s filming – giving the actors little time to prepare and truly understand the vibe of the story or their characters.
Encompassing comedy, crime, action, adventure, drama, and romance, Beat the Devil instead doesn’t truly have one direction – making it a most oddball premise. Shot in Ravello, Italy (just above the Amalfi Coast), the story finds Billy Dannreuther (Bogart – Dark Passage; In a Lonely Place), a formerly wealthy man who has fallen on hard times, forced to work with a sketchy gang: ring leader Peterson (Robert Morley), the definitely not Irish Julius O’Hara (Lorre – Casablanca), murderer Major Jack Ross (Ivor Barnard), and loose-lipped Ravello (Marco Tulli).
As they all wait for a much delayed ship to Africa (the whole plot hinging on the rather dubious uranium deposits on a big plot of land that is for sale), Billy befriends the seemingly wealthy British aristocrat Harry Chelm (Edward Underdown) and his rather imaginative wife Gwendolyn (Jones). . . a rather kinky storyline finds Billy having an affair with Gwendolyn while his wife Maria (Lollobrigida), a lover of all things British, starts her own tryst with the rather milquetoast Harry (he always has a chill, seasickness, or is in need of his beloved hot water bottle).
When it finally looks like the ship is boarding, one has to wonder what will come of this ragtag group of people. Will these two affairs take precedence over the criminal colluding and ample amount of cash that is up for grabs? Also, one has to wonder if Gwendolyn keeps talking by using exaggerations, could the four criminals take her as a bigger threat than she actually is? Or, might Billy, finding himself in a most dangerous situation, simply attempt to escape from everyone and run for his life? Really, with all the re-writes happening, no one can truly guess what will occur in this boisterous narrative.
With a bizarre atmosphere, sometimes it feels like a murderous plot point is on its way. . . only for a comedic curve ball to come out of the blue, or vice versa. Without giving too much away, Capote seems to be having way too much fun supposedly killing people off before revealing that they’re absolutely fine and everyone panicked for nothing – a sort of dark comedy twist.
A rare massive failure for the team of Bogart and Huston, audiences were totally confused with the lack of a true crime story, this mixed tone keeping audiences away from theatres and making for a rare financial failure for the pair. . . it being extra painful for the star, as he partially financed the feature himself. Despite this, over the years, Beat the Devil has grown into its unique form, gaining a cult status for its rather campy feel. Another worthy note, after a bad car accident in which Bogart lost some teeth (you can tell his mouth is in pain in a lot of the scenes), he struggled to speak. . . it has long been said that a then unknown Peter Sellers (who would have his breakout role in a few years), a man of many voices, dubbed the icon’s voice until he recovered.
Truly a Bogart film like no other, Beat the Devil shines thanks to its real Italian locations and dynamic cast, while its unorthodox script will likely be hit or miss depending on the opinions of each and every viewer. Also featuring a small role from Bernard Lee, it’s fun seeing James Bond’s M (which he reprised an impressive eleven times), playing a Scotland Yard official almost a decade before he took on the iconic role in Dr. No and beyond. So, grab your hot water bottle and settle in for this eccentric comedy tinged adventure, it’s a (uranium) bomb worth seeing.