BEAT THE DEVIL (1953) **1/2 Incredibly great cast in appropriate roles full of witty lines (courtesy of Truman Capote and John Huston, working off a James Helvick novel). Everyone knows that Humphrey Bogart is the king of the noires, but Robert Morley is a more than worthy adversary. Friend, adversary, crony, associate, whatever, there are no clear lines in the dark. In the ladies competition Gina Lollobrigida edges Jennifer Jones with a particularly fine showing in the expertly over-acting in accordance with the script category. It's not just the stars, though, Huston also gets brilliantly vainglorious performances, whose signature characteristic is a uniform subtlety allowing only hints of the underlying satire, from Mario Purrone, Peter Lorre, Saro Urzí, Edward Underdown, Marco Tulli, Ivor Barnard, and Manuel Serano. It all smacks more than a little bit of the vision of Capote filtered through the lens of Huston (hard focus on spontaneous brilliance offered with an air of already having moved on), not least when all these spectacularly crafted aspects are jumbled together for presentation in a manner that suggests frustration, affectation, and hastiness.
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