This is the kind of film made by a film director of solid reputation like John Huston when they want to hang out with the rest of the guys in the Hollywood-hood and spend their off hours partying in exotic locations. Huston and Truman Capote ultimately tinkered with the screenplay together, a pair of self-indulgent jokesters, and however inspired, their efforts put together an offbeat little gem with a storyline that entertains at every complicated plot twist. It's a wacky story about a group of con artists each to a one demonstrating various levels of cunning and idiocy. Meeting up together in the scenic isolation of some southern Italian port town, they're all obsessed with getting to some unnamed country in British East Africa where they plan to grab for themselves a monopoly in uranium deposits.
This crew consists of Billy Dannreuther and his wife Maria played by Humphrey Bogart and Gina Lollabrigida. Dannreuther is the seasoned soldier of fortune type, a wanderer of the world always looking for ways to make a million. Bogart, a consummate professional, would never put in a lazy performance but here he shows little enthusiasm and just looks weary and impatient. This, however, actually serves well for the character, Dannreuther being a man who's seen it all and takes nothing for granted. His Italian wife all bosoms, curves and pouty lips is an Anglophile obsessed with all things English from tea in the afternoon to a hunger for the rolling lawns of titled English estates.
The couple are in uneasy league with a quartet of ne'er-do-wells, the key members being Peterson, played by Robert Morley, Ivor Barnard as Major Jack Ross, a loony homicidal fascist who believes Hitler and Mussolini had the right idea, and Peter Lorre as Julius O'Hara. O'Hara, so obviously a brand of O'Hara that Ireland never saw, pridefully expresses that O'Hara is a very respectable surname in Chile. He counteracts Dannreuther's frustration with the complications of their scheme by emphasizing what every con man needs to keep in the forefront: "To seem trustworthy is no more important than to be trustworthy." Time has not been kind to Peter Lorre who only age 49 in this movie looks significantly older since his appearance in Huston's 1941 "The Maltese Falcon" twelve years previous.
We get a blonde Jennifer Jones of all things, apparently an effort to give her the vibes of the blonde noir babe practiced at duplicity. She's Gwendolen Chelm married to a stock-character British male, a member of the prissy, tight-laced breed, humorless and outwardly dull-witted. Chelm breaks into crisis mode when he finds he didn't pack his hot water bottle.
The group of disreputables are waylaid on some North African shoreline after their African bound boat sinks, and taken in for interrogation and detention by horseback marauding Arabs and their leader. These turn out to be not a tribe of terrorists in the modern sense but terrifyingly stupid and intimidating. After Gwendolen rambles on in protest over their detainment, the chief of this band simply points out that "In my country a female may at least know her words are not heard." He may not care what a woman has to say but he certainly is interested in what they look like. It turns out he suffers from a swooning obsession with actress Rita Hayworth, his dream girl whom he'd like to add to is harem.
Whichever one of this crew scores the riches at the end of the game doesn't really matter. It's a winner for the viewer.
This crew consists of Billy Dannreuther and his wife Maria played by Humphrey Bogart and Gina Lollabrigida. Dannreuther is the seasoned soldier of fortune type, a wanderer of the world always looking for ways to make a million. Bogart, a consummate professional, would never put in a lazy performance but here he shows little enthusiasm and just looks weary and impatient. This, however, actually serves well for the character, Dannreuther being a man who's seen it all and takes nothing for granted. His Italian wife all bosoms, curves and pouty lips is an Anglophile obsessed with all things English from tea in the afternoon to a hunger for the rolling lawns of titled English estates.
The couple are in uneasy league with a quartet of ne'er-do-wells, the key members being Peterson, played by Robert Morley, Ivor Barnard as Major Jack Ross, a loony homicidal fascist who believes Hitler and Mussolini had the right idea, and Peter Lorre as Julius O'Hara. O'Hara, so obviously a brand of O'Hara that Ireland never saw, pridefully expresses that O'Hara is a very respectable surname in Chile. He counteracts Dannreuther's frustration with the complications of their scheme by emphasizing what every con man needs to keep in the forefront: "To seem trustworthy is no more important than to be trustworthy." Time has not been kind to Peter Lorre who only age 49 in this movie looks significantly older since his appearance in Huston's 1941 "The Maltese Falcon" twelve years previous.
We get a blonde Jennifer Jones of all things, apparently an effort to give her the vibes of the blonde noir babe practiced at duplicity. She's Gwendolen Chelm married to a stock-character British male, a member of the prissy, tight-laced breed, humorless and outwardly dull-witted. Chelm breaks into crisis mode when he finds he didn't pack his hot water bottle.
The group of disreputables are waylaid on some North African shoreline after their African bound boat sinks, and taken in for interrogation and detention by horseback marauding Arabs and their leader. These turn out to be not a tribe of terrorists in the modern sense but terrifyingly stupid and intimidating. After Gwendolen rambles on in protest over their detainment, the chief of this band simply points out that "In my country a female may at least know her words are not heard." He may not care what a woman has to say but he certainly is interested in what they look like. It turns out he suffers from a swooning obsession with actress Rita Hayworth, his dream girl whom he'd like to add to is harem.
Whichever one of this crew scores the riches at the end of the game doesn't really matter. It's a winner for the viewer.