Beat the Devil (film)

For the short film starring James Brown and Gary Oldman, see The Hire § Beat the Devil.

Beat the Devil
1953 film poster
Directed byJohn Huston
Screenplay byJohn Huston
Truman Capote
Based onBeat the Devil
by James Helvick
Produced byJohn Huston
Starring
CinematographyOswald Morris
Edited byRalph Kemplen
Music byFranco Mannino
Production
companies
Distributed byBritish Lion Films
(United Kingdom)
United Artists
(United States)
Release dates
  • 24 November 1953 (1953-11-24) (London)
  • March 12, 1954 (1954-03-12) (New York City)
Running time
94 minutes
Countries
  • United States
  • Great Britain
  • Italy[1][2]
LanguageEnglish
Box office£115,926 (UK)[3]
$1.1 million[4]

Beat the Devil is a 1953 adventure comedy film directed by John Huston, starring Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, and Gina Lollobrigida, in her American debut, and featuring Robert Morley, Peter Lorre and Bernard Lee.[5] Huston and Truman Capote wrote the screenplay, loosely based upon the 1951 novel of the same name by British journalist Claud Cockburn writing under the pseudonym James Helvick. Huston made the film as a sort of loose parody of the 1941 film The Maltese Falcon, which Huston directed and in which Bogart and Lorre appeared. Capote said, "John [Huston] and I decided to kid the story, to treat it as a parody. Instead of another Maltese Falcon, we turned it into a... [spoof] on this type of film."[6]

The script, written on a day-to-day basis as the film was shot,[7] concerns the adventures of a motley crew of swindlers and ne'er-do-wells trying to claim land rich in uranium deposits in Kenya as they wait in a small Italian port to travel aboard a tramp steamer en route to Mombasa.[8]

  1. ^ Cite error: The named reference TheCinematheque was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  2. ^ Cite error: The named reference IlCinemaRitrovato was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  3. ^ Vincent Porter, 'The Robert Clark Account', Historical Journal of Film, Radio and Television, Vol 20 No 4, 2000 p501
  4. ^ "1954 Box Office Champs". Variety Weekly. 5 January 1955. p. 59. - figures are rentals in the US and Canada
  5. ^ "Beat the Devil (1953)". MRQE. Retrieved 1 June 2012.
  6. ^ Gehring, Wes D. (1999) Parody as Film Genre: "Never Give a Saga an Even Break" Greenwood. p.12. ISBN 9780313261862
  7. ^ Clayton, Jack, quoted in Plimpton, p. 127
  8. ^ "Beat the Devil (1953)". Rotten tomatoes. Retrieved 1 June 2012.