BEAT THE DEVIL
(Romulus) FTER all that Lillian Ross and others have told us about John Huston it’s not hard to imagine the high old times that were had by everyone when he was making Beat the Devil. For a
start he and iLruman Capote must have laughed themselves silly over the script, and my guess is that the atmosphere wasn’t too depressingly gloomy when the unit and the wonderful cast got down to the job in Italy. The outcome is a stylish piece of clowning, amusing to look at and listen to, but not, I think, as funny as it probably seemed to everyone when it was being made--though I must say a great many people got a big laugh from it the night I saw it. It all starts off when a very proper Englishman (Edward Underdown) and his wife (Jennifer Jones)-a girl more imaginative than truthful-meet another couple (Humphrey Bogart and Gina Lollobrigida), who are attached to a gang of crooks (Robert Morley, Peter Lorre, Ivor Barnard and Marco Tulli) bound for Africa and a packet of easy dough to be made out of uranium. After a certain amount of conspiratorial and romantic this and that they all get away on the same boat, are shipwrecked, captured by Arabs, and so on. Never for a moment are we allowed to take all this seriously. Yet Mr. Huston, with a cameraman (Oswald Morris’ who either knows what he’s doing or does what he’s told. has used his considerable talent to put it on the screen with much skill and imagination; and he has got some fine performances from his remarkable cast. To illustrate: the shipboard scene with the sinister Mr. Barnard as a killer stalking Mr. Underdown on deck while a player piano tinkles in the saloon would in another context make your hair stand on ‘end. In the event, of course, it doesn’t; and, depending on the sort of things that amuse you and on the state of your liver, you. could feel, here and elsewhere, that a great deal of talent has been rather extravagantly spent. You might be right, too. But, oh, -to have been so much as a clapper-boy out there in Ravello when the thing was cooking!
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https://paperspast.natlib.govt.nz/periodicals/NZLIST19550225.2.39.1.3
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New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 813, 25 February 1955, Page 18
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374BEAT THE DEVIL New Zealand Listener, Volume 32, Issue 813, 25 February 1955, Page 18
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Copyright in the work University Entrance by Janet Frame (credited as J.F., 22 March 1946, page 18), is owned by the Janet Frame Literary Trust. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this article and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the New Zealand Listener. You can search, browse, and print this article for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from the Janet Frame Literary Trust for any other use.
Copyright in the Denis Glover serial Hot Water Sailor published in 1959 is owned by Pia Glover. The National Library has been granted permission to digitise this serial and make it available online as part of this digitised version of the Listener. You can search, browse, and print this serial for research and personal study only. Permission must be obtained from Pia Glover for any other use.
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