Beat the Devil (Schach dem Teufel)

Beat the Devil (Schach dem Teufel) | USA 1953 | R: John Huston | B: Truman Capote, John Huston, after the novel by James Helvick | K: Oswald Morris | M: Franco Mannino | D: Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Gina Lollobrigida, Robert Morley, Peter Lorre | 94 min | OF | A group of shady businessmen tries to make the big money with a possible uranium deposit in Africa, but it seems even more important to them to outwit one another. With their fifth and final collaboration, Huston and Bogart made an absurd comedy in which Truman Capote's wonderfully dry humor comments on the grotesque plans and their magnificent failure. Everyone involved had great fun with the game of confusion, Capote went to particular lengths for Jennifer Jones and Gina Lollobrigida, and Peter Lorre delivers a monologue on the nature of time that can stand alongside Orson Welles' cuckoo clock monologue from THE THIRD MAN.