Kaelan Mccaffrey
Like the great film, it's made with a great deal of visible affection both in front of and behind the camera.
Scarlet
The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.
Caryl
It is a whirlwind of delight --- attractive actors, stunning couture, spectacular sets and outrageous parties. It's a feast for the eyes. But what really makes this dramedy work is the acting.
Michael O'Keefe
The fabled John Huston directs this Truman Capote screenplay. Billy Dannreuther(Humphrey) is part of a group of international crooks--Peterson(Robert Morely, Julius O'Hara(Peter Lorre) and Ravello(Marco Tulli) that are stranded in Italy trying to catch a steamer to Africa. Billy's wife Maria(Gina Lollobrigida),starving for romance, is a bit uneasy when her husband meets Gwendolen Chelm(Jennifer Jones), the feminine half of a British couple waiting for the same steamer being repaired. Counting Mr.Chelm(Edward Underdown), there are now seven people ready to set sail to Africa, all conjuring a scheme to beat each other to lay claim on land that is rich in uranium.BEAT THE DEVIL didn't start out well with critics and viewers, but looking back some think this black comedy to be the epitome of a 1950's spy-spoof. For some strange reason, my favorite sequence is the evacuation of the sinking boat. Why didn't Miss Lollobrigida get more screen time? Bogart was effortless.Other players: Bernard Lee, Saro Urzi, Ivor Bernard and Mario Perrone.
SnoopyStyle
Various crooks, smugglers, con men and adventurers are trying to go to Africa to buy a new valuable material called Uranium. Peterson (Robert Morley), Julius O'Hara (Peter Lorre), the Dannreuthers (Humphrey Bogart, Gina Lollobrigida) and others are stuck in Italy as they wait for their ship to be repaired. Mrs. Gwendolen Chelm (Jennifer Jones) is fascinated with the group as she travels with her husband.Truman Capote is injecting this with lots of snappy rapid-fire dialog. John Huston is trying to shoot the idyllic location with lots of camera work. However this movie just lack a cohesive drive. The characters are all eccentric. There is a rambling quality to this. The story of this ragtag group wasting time at this Mediterranean port isn't that compelling or exciting. The movie feels like on hold for far too long. It feels like a lot of A-list talents playing around without much of a goal.
Applause Meter
This is the kind of film made by a film director of solid reputation like John Huston when they want to hang out with the rest of the guys in the Hollywood-hood and spend their off hours partying in exotic locations. Huston and Truman Capote ultimately tinkered with the screenplay together, a pair of self-indulgent jokesters, and however inspired, their efforts put together an offbeat little gem with a storyline that entertains at every complicated plot twist. It's a wacky story about a group of con artists each to a one demonstrating various levels of cunning and idiocy. Meeting up together in the scenic isolation of some southern Italian port town, they're all obsessed with getting to some unnamed country in British East Africa where they plan to grab for themselves a monopoly in uranium deposits. This crew consists of Billy Dannreuther and his wife Maria played by Humphrey Bogart and Gina Lollabrigida. Dannreuther is the seasoned soldier of fortune type, a wanderer of the world always looking for ways to make a million. Bogart, a consummate professional, would never put in a lazy performance but here he shows little enthusiasm and just looks weary and impatient. This, however, actually serves well for the character, Dannreuther being a man who's seen it all and takes nothing for granted. His Italian wife all bosoms, curves and pouty lips is an Anglophile obsessed with all things English from tea in the afternoon to a hunger for the rolling lawns of titled English estates. The couple are in uneasy league with a quartet of ne'er-do-wells, the key members being Peterson, played by Robert Morley, Ivor Barnard as Major Jack Ross, a loony homicidal fascist who believes Hitler and Mussolini had the right idea, and Peter Lorre as Julius O'Hara. O'Hara, so obviously a brand of O'Hara that Ireland never saw, pridefully expresses that O'Hara is a very respectable surname in Chile. He counteracts Dannreuther's frustration with the complications of their scheme by emphasizing what every con man needs to keep in the forefront: "To seem trustworthy is no more important than to be trustworthy." Time has not been kind to Peter Lorre who only age 49 in this movie looks significantly older since his appearance in Huston's 1941 "The Maltese Falcon" twelve years previous. We get a blonde Jennifer Jones of all things, apparently an effort to give her the vibes of the blonde noir babe practiced at duplicity. She's Gwendolen Chelm married to a stock-character British male, a member of the prissy, tight-laced breed, humorless and outwardly dull-witted. Chelm breaks into crisis mode when he finds he didn't pack his hot water bottle. The group of disreputables are waylaid on some North African shoreline after their African bound boat sinks, and taken in for interrogation and detention by horseback marauding Arabs and their leader. These turn out to be not a tribe of terrorists in the modern sense but terrifyingly stupid and intimidating. After Gwendolen rambles on in protest over their detainment, the chief of this band simply points out that "In my country a female may at least know her words are not heard." He may not care what a woman has to say but he certainly is interested in what they look like. It turns out he suffers from a swooning obsession with actress Rita Hayworth, his dream girl whom he'd like to add to is harem. Whichever one of this crew scores the riches at the end of the game doesn't really matter. It's a winner for the viewer.
Patryk Czekaj
I wanted to see this movie simply because I was somewhere in the middle of a Humphrey Bogart marathon. Truthfully, I must say that the main plot did not amaze right from the start. Even though the amount of great actors is really terrific, the performances that they give are, sadly, on a much lower level than they should be. Not one of the characters that we see (Billy Dannreuther and his wife, Mrs. Helm and her husband, and the four crooks) stand out from the group. One thing I can say about the four main characters - the crooks - is that their comedic appearances almost burst me into tears. If it was not for the fact that it is hard to attach this movie to one particular genre, and even the director was not sure what the final outcome was, I would have to say that this is one of the first parodies of a classical noir cinema. However, paradoxically, if it was meant to be a parody I would not say that it is truly a good one. That is what amazes me about this movie - you are not sure what kind of a flick you are watching, yet, if you want to categorize it becomes even less entertaining. Still, the plot is enjoyable, because of the obvious conflicts and scams overwhelming all of the greedy and suspicious characters. The events that occur in the three different places (Italy, ship and North Africa) are somewhat adorable, because of the comedic subplots. And in the end even the great old saying comes in handy - where two fight the third one wins. It is, ladies and gentlemen, as simple as that.
