Comment on Restored Bogart classic ‘Beat the Devil’ screens at Castro

In a sense, John Huston’s 1953 chaotic noir satire “Beat the Devil” has been a lost film, even though it’s never really been out of circulation (you can stream it now on YouTube if you can stand the substandard picture quality). [...] you’ve never seen the film the way it was meant to be seen — uncut, with a restored image based on the original camera negative. With a freewheeling tale scripted by Truman Capote about a group of international hustlers, con men and nefarious adventurers plotting a scheme to score some uranium, Huston was spoofing his own “The Maltese Falcon,” the 1941 noir that made Humphrey Bogart a star. Bogart loved the idea so much he not only signed on as lead rogue in “Beat the Devil,” but also helped bankroll the film through his production company, Santana Productions. Along for the fun ride is Bogart’s “Falcon” co-star Peter Lorre, as well as Jennifer Jones, Robert Morley and Gina Lollobrigida, the Italian actress and future Hollywood starlet in her first English-language film. The film was a box office bomb, and the rights fell into public domain, which explains why the film could only be seen in countless unwatchable washed-out prints that formed the basis of so many bad DVD releases. [...] it became a cult classic anyway, and now Sony Pictures, in conjunction with Martin Scorsese’s Film Foundation, has restored the original cut of the film, without the narration and with the missing four minutes. The picturesque movie was shot in the seaside port of Ravallo, Italy, where the crooks kill time while awaiting repairs on their rusty boat, their ticket across the Mediterranean to North Africa, where uranium fields await. Huston liked the project but hated the original script and invited Capote, then 28 years old, to join the production in Ravallo and write from scratch — some pages of dialogue filmed hours or even minutes after being written. The movie reminds me of “A Fish Called Wanda,” Charles Crichton’s 1987 more broadly comic heist film (indeed, Huston might have drawn some inspiration from Crichton’s 1951 comic heist masterpiece, “The Lavender Hill Mob”).