I can’t recall where I first heard of the concept, but there is a historical Jewish humor about the citizens of the city Chelm. In the jokes, the residents often come to the right answer to a problem, though through specious reasoning. Given the city is in Poland, I guess these are a form of the old Pollack jokes, though these bits usually have some curious sort of lesson or message.
In 1953’s Beat the Devil, Jennifer Jones and Edward Underdown are a married couple with the unusual last name of Chelm. I don’t know if it is supposed to be a reference to that Polish town which is the butt of so many jokes, but it is a suspiciously unusual moniker. And this is a curious and unfortunate film which ambles its way to a punchline of a conclusion seemingly without knowing how it got there.
It is hard to believe such a mess could star Humphrey Bogart, let alone also feature the talents of Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, Jennifer Jones and Gina Lollobrigida. Compounding my disbelief is the fact it was directed by John Huston, though twelve years (and roughly that number of films) on from The Maltese Falcon. He even co-wrote the film, and his fellow scribe was nobody less than Truman Capote, himself yet a name at that time.
To be brutally honest, I have always suspected Capote of being overrated. Maybe I just don’t know enough about his work. The sum total of my knowledge of him roughly follows this timeline: has sex with a young male killer in prison and writes In Cold Blood partly based on that man’s experiences, walks friend Harper Lee through radically revising her To Kill a Mockingbird, writes Breakfast at Tiffany’s, becomes a parody of himself as a talk show staple in the 70’s, is a staple on the floor at Studio 54 where he presumably has sex with more young men. Really, it is roughly how I feel about Norman Mailer if you flipped the sexual preference and removed all the misogyny.
Whoever wrote this dialogue sure felt overly confident about their wit. And I may like witty lit but, to use the modern vernacular, this is far from lit. Consider this odd discourse from Lorre about the nature of time, which is interjected into the proceedings seemingly at random: “What is time? Swiss manufacture it. French hoard it. Italians squander it. Americans say it is money. Hindus say it does not exist. Do you know what I say? Time is a crook.” I have a feeling such turgid and self-aware speeches (and there are many of them over the course of the runtime) were Capote’s contribution.
An element of the production I learned about only after watching it for the first (and likely last) time is nobody was happy with the production when they found the thriller they were working on was very dry and absent of thrills. Huston and Capote then ditched the source novel and proceeded to write new scenes each day. The result is a film I had suspected of being made up as they went along, yet I was still startled to discover that was precisely the case.
The actors sure seem bewildered, and I was never convinced of any of the performances nor any of the dialogue they doubtlessly had learned only very recently. Bogey, Morley, Lorre and Marco Tulli are on their way to African to secure a deal for some land which is rich in Uranium. The Chelms end up on the same boat as that nefarious lot, and they prove to be just as duplicitous, their alleged upper-crust British life instead being one far closer to earth.
Before she has even met Bogey, Jones has assessed Morley and company as “desperate men”. When Underdown asks her how she came to that conclusion, she replies, “Because they didn’t look at my legs.” You see, that’s another example of the dialogue that consistently rings false. It doesn’t even make sense. I’m not sure in what sense she’s thinking of the word “desperate” but, if they aren’t ogling her pins, then they clearly aren’t desperately horny.
I didn’t like any of the characters in this, but felt Jones fared the worst. Her perpetual lying is passed off as an overactive imagination, though her deceptions are genuinely dangerous. As Bogey describes her: “Let’s just say she uses her imagination more than her memory.” That is a unique way to describe her, and I think this phrase puts a new perspective on Alzheimer’s as well.
The plot has the characters stumble from a scenic town in Italy to a steamboat to the shore of Africa, all the while bickering and spouting mouthfuls of dialogue that convey the worst aspects of both improv and overwriting. In one moment, Bogey says of Lorre: “At this rate, I’ll be 60 by the time you get the point” (spoiler alert: Lorre does not get to the point). Characters seem to die in different ways, only to later turn out to still be alive, having intentionally and inexplicably choosing to not send word they only almost met their maker. Jones and Bogey have sex, only for her to afterwards chastise Bogey for his low opinion of her husband. How generous, defending the man she just cuckolded. That’s OK, because Lollobrigida pines for Underdown, though it is unclear if that infatuation was consummated.
There are aspects of the production which were eerily prescient. Bogey waxes upon how the mineral wealth of African has yet to be truly exploited, which made me think of how other parts of the world (especially those in the far north that are only now unthawing) are being considered for pillaging at the time I am writing this. Ivor Barnard, as a spectacularly unhinged hitman, goes on a rank about how Hitler was right, a viewpoint which has been expressed far more publicly as of late than I thought possible at any time after 1945. Lastly, I doubt the journalist Dan Rather was inspired to take that name after seeing this (I assume he was born with that moniker), but Bogart’s last name in this is Dannreuther. With so many people addressing him by his last name, it sounds like he’s answering to “Dan Rather”.
I laughed exactly once during the film and that was when the obviously conniving Morley insists to a police inspector he and his companions are innocent, if the inspector would only look at their faces. Cut to the guard’s POV as he takes in the visages of four of the least trustworthy men imaginable.
In the final moments of Beat the Devil, Bogey literally gets the last laugh, though the joke is on him. It is almost like one of those ancient jokes about the wise men of Chelm, and I wonder if Bogart, whether his character here or the actor himself, felt he had learned anything from this. Given this mess was produced by under his Santana banner, the only options available upon completion of this debacle were to laugh or cry.
Dir: John Huston
Starring Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley
Watched on BFI UK blu-ray (region B)