John HustonBeat the Devil (1953)

Off-genre comedy-film noir.

This item is part of the collection: Film Noir

Director: John Huston
Producer: Jack Clayton, John Huston, Humphrey Bogart
Production Company: Santana, Romulus Films Ltd., Rizzoli-Haggiag (associate)
Audio/Visual: sound, black and white
Keywords: Crime; Satire; Comedy; Drama

Creative Commons license: Public Domain

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Reviewer: billbarstad - - February 20, 2007
Subject: Engaging movie

Jennifer Jones gives an extraordinary performance in this post-war fatalistic story. Humphrey Bogart's is oddly quite uneven. Delightful dialog kept me amused. Has the usual John Huston touches.

I downloaded the mpeg4 file. Video and audio were fine.

Reviewer: md_gizmo - - February 11, 2007
Subject: divx

buy a DVD/DiVX mp4 player and do away with DVD authoring..divx 6 has great compression and a full length movie fits on a cd ;)

Reviewer: geology guy - - January 3, 2007
Subject: Divx

Great Bogart film, but not quite a 5 star as with Cassablanca! Am going to try to convert it to Divx and then use Nero to burn it to a DVD and see if I can make a standard DVD with it. A note on Nero and divx, Nero won't take it as a supported file type but it will load it as an all file type. It is also a way around the Dolby encoding on other films, so Nero will decode the sound without the Dolby plugin.

Reviewer: DrSativa - - December 11, 2006
Subject: wont burn as a standard dvd

There is only one thing wrong with this mpeg and that is the screen size it was encoded at. ie 640x480. This means that it will not burn to a standard dvd, even after trying to re author it in tmpgenc DVD author, no luck. So i am going to have to hope i can burn it as a udf/iso in Nero, and see if one of my DVD players will take it as a straight mpeg.

Reviewer: harrylyme - - August 6, 2006
Subject: "I have a slight chill on my liver" LOL

This is one of my favourite Bogart films. It's quite funny,great cast of characters. Bogart so often had great chemistry with his female leads and this movie is no exception.

Reviewer: poppy_roush - - July 26, 2006
Subject: loved it

I had never seen a Bogie film before. This was a great way to start. This was a great film start to finish.

Reviewer: robcat2075 - - February 10, 2006
Subject: My new favorite movie

The last 10 minutes are a bit weak, but this is a very entertaining movie none-the-less. So many great characters, so many great situations to put them thru the wringer. Bogart is great of course, but the other actors don't cede an inch to him. Edward Underdown is hysterical as the english aristocrat: "I have a frightful chill on my liver!" If anyone had made an animated feature with characters like this we'd say, "no way, too outlandish".

Reviewer: The Thracian - - December 25, 2005
Subject: don't let 'em kid ya

Dismiss the comments of those panning this movie.
This movie has not become a cult classic for nothing. Among its other merits, it is one of the few films where a film noir is mixed with a comedy.

'Beat the Devil' is a fine piece of work by Houston, Capote, and Bogie. Its totally enjoyable. Good pacing, snappy dialogue, plenty of atmosphere and unusual locales. The plot has a half-dozen twists and surprises--and more than a few chuckles are to be had, at the wild antics of the outlandish cast of characters.

The picture has old-world charm. It is a film from the hundred-year-long-period of filmmaking *before* Star Wars came out. It emphasizes dialogue and character rather than action. It is a movie for intelligent adults with a sensitivity for the humor found in awkward social situations, where classes mix.

Its just a given that, today, not everyone will understand or appreciate this kind of thing.

Reviewer: Mr. Verde - - December 23, 2005
Subject: Hmmm.

I am twirling, twirling about falling through space.
Read the following reviews and you may feel the same way. Oh, the film. Wasn't half bad.

Reviewer: terracesider - - December 21, 2005
Subject: Fun

An old favourite, well worth watching for the support cast. Lorre and Morley work extremely well together; along with Ivor Barnard's wonderful Galloping Major, they make up one of the oddest assortment of crooks ever assembled on screen. Oh, and there's Bogart, who seems to be enjoying himslef immensely.

Reviewer: jimelena - - December 19, 2005
Subject: Not so hot

From the crime, satire, comedy, drama catagory this movie seems to cover just about everything. Except the watchability class. Don't waste your time watching perfectly good actors bite the bullet. There should be a boring catagory.

Reviewer: kareneliot - - December 16, 2005
Subject: Another winner.

This is another film I would like to watch more than once. I have never been a Bogart fan, but I really enjoyed his performance in this film!

Reviewer: DaveinMaine - - December 3, 2005
Subject: re:"spoilers"

It is worth noting that the supposed spoiler was lifted right from the film's IMDB page

Reviewer: gcinema - - October 6, 2005
Subject: Do not read the previous two reviews: "SPOILERS"...

I, for one, read the reviews top to bottom. WIth that in mind:

As for the last reviewer: instead of reiterating the previous reviewers summary of the spoiler and giving away the ending twice, as well as creating a question in the review readers mind as to "what are you talking about", and therefore reading the spolier to make sense of the review... how about, just writing a "review" that states--THE PREVIOUS REVIEW CONTAINS A SPOILER...

Make sense?

Reviewer: casalang - - August 30, 2005
Subject: Re Tamlin's Review

Why would you include the information that "they never qrite (sic) get there" in your review for Beat the Devil? Yet another confirmation that reading reviews can spoil a movie experience...

Reviewer: Tamlin - - August 24, 2005
Subject: A Ship of Fools

Cast includes Bogart, Peter :Lorre, Gina Lollobrigida Robert Morley and others.
Thoughly enjoyed this caper .flick. A rogues gallery sets off to Africa to make millions in diamonds-but they never qrite get there Screemplay by Truman Capote and John Huston is cynical (Capote) yet forgiving (Huston)
Great character role playing Low budget but it all makes it to the screen