Some want to make their fortune - and the others will kill them for it…
I am so glad I watched The Last of Sheila earlier this year, because it was the perfect entree for watching this movie.
Eccentric is a word I wanted to avoid, but I cannot describe this movie without it.
The film is an exercise in extremes, and does not progress so much as stand in bemusement as this collection of self-absorbed buffoons stumble toward a reckoning.
The film’s antagonists - Peterson (Robert Morley), Julius O'Hara (Peter Lorre), Major Jack Ross (Ivor Barnard), and Ravello (Marco Tulli) - are cartoonishly conniving. Bogart’s ostensible love interest Maria (Gina Lollobrigida) is a fairweather companion, whose affections are tied to the status of whoever she is in proximity to (assumed or real, it does not matter). Bogart’s other love interest, Jennifer Jones, is a fantasist obsessed with making her life seem more interesting.
Everyone is not who they think they are - except for Bogie himself.
Bogart’s character, failed businessman Billy Dannreuther, is a lampoon of his outsider image. Unlike the tragic antiheroes he usually plays, Dannreuther is a deadpan witness to the madness around him. And Bogart plays him with a devilish smirk - he may not have a lot of power in this situation, but he is going to enjoy watching his opponents overestimate theirs.
Bookended by a marching band that seems to signpost the frivolity of the story in between, Beat the Devil has the feel of a summer holiday. Everyone is at play, and having a lark.
Written by John Houston and Truman Capote, Beat the Devil has an energy and sense of mordant wit that feel completely distinct from the other Bogart vehicles I have seen thus far.
It is not my favourite film of the Bogart festival, but it is singular - and unlike a lot of straightforward comedies, it gets funnier as it goes along.
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