A Devil a Day

Looking for a good public domain movie to watch to-night? You could do worse than 1953's Beat the Devil starring Humphrey Bogart, Gina Lollobrigida, and Jennifer Jones. Jones is billed over Lollobrigida but it's mainly Lollobrigida I think of as the female lead. She is luscious in this movie.

She plays the wife of Bogart's character and I don't know why his attentions are drawn off by Jennifer Jones. Well, Jones is pretty cute, too, playing a spoiled British tourist who decides to make a game of it when she finds herself in the midst of crooks. Bogart along with four other professional criminals have some kind of scheme involving uranium in Africa, the movie's never too clear on the specifics.

Peter Lorre plays one of the four crooks and delivers one of the film's most oft quoted lines:

Time. Time. 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? I say time is a crook.

The screenplay was written by Truman Capote and director John Huston while the the film was being shot. There's something exciting about the minute by minute sense of invention. The movie has a lovely casual tone, like you're just hanging out with these crooks. Even a moment like the one where one of the crooks starts spouting off about Hitler and Mussolini comes off as an amusing sideshow rather than dramatic.

Bogart seems like he's having fun though you can clearly see he lost his front teeth in a car accident during production.

Beat the Devil is available on YouTube and Amazon Prime and probably lots of other places.

X Sonnet #1741

The arch resembles birds in tepid love.
Oh, here's a symbol thick as leaden shoes.
And where's a burning soul to kill a dove?
For rites as such were wrought to kill the blues.
The violent styles change about a hair.
A second more's enough to hang a clock.
A voice contained the smallest hint of care.
A gravid trap could ape an iron lock.
So why's a rock the bouncing damage ball?
The plaster rains across the jagged floor.
A catered curse careens along the hall.
A ready nurse abused the crazy poor.
With melted candy coated shoes we go.
The air beyond the bowl can lately glow.