Beat the Devil (1953 film)

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Beat the Devil

Directed by	John Huston
Produced by	John Huston
Written by	James Helvick (novel) John Huston Truman Capote
Starring	Humphrey Bogart Jennifer Jones Gina Lollobrigida Peter Lorre Robert Morley Edward Underdown Ivor Barnard Marco Tulli Bernard Lee
Music by	Franco Mannino
Release date(s)	March 12, 1954
Running time	100 min.
Language	English
IMDb profile

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

Beat the Devil is a 1953 film directed by John Huston and starring Humphrey Bogart. It was co-authored by Huston and Truman Capote, and loosely based upon a novel of the same name by British critic Claud Cockburn, writing under the pseudonym James Helvick, as a tongue-in-cheek spoof of his earlier masterpiece, The Maltese Falcon, and of films of its genre. The script, which was written on a day-to-day basis as the film was being shot, concerns the adventures of a motley crew of swindlers and ne'er-do-wells trying to lay claim to land rich in uranium deposits in Kenya as they wait in a small Italian port or travel aboard an ill-fated tramp steamer en route to Mombasa. The all-star cast includes Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley (playing the role that Sydney Greenstreet would have played had he still been acting), Peter Lorre and Bernard Lee, (who was to gain widespread recognition with his appearances as "M" in the James Bond movies.)

Spoilers end here.

This Huston opus does not easily fit into the standard set of film categories; it has variously been classified as a "thriller," a "comedy," a "drama," a "crime" and a "romance" movie. It is above all else a parody of the Film Noir style that Huston himself had pioneered and as such has developed cult status in the ensuing years. The movie was not critically received (although it was to become a National Board of Review winner) and was to mark the closure of the "quest movies" period in Huston’s career.

Humphrey Bogart never liked the movie, perhaps because he lost a good deal of his own money bankrolling it, and said of Beat the Devil, "Only phonies like it."

Roger Ebert notes that the film has been characterized as the first camp movie.

This film is now in the public domain and is hence freely available, as below.