Humphrey Bogart, Jennifer Jones, Robert Morley (playing the "Sydney Greenstreet" role), and Peter Lorre wander around inside a comedy-thriller but brilliantly play it as a film noir (Gina Lollobridgia delivers a decent performance but may simply have not been let in on the joke). Quite possibly the first "camp" movie ever made, audiences will enjoy the fact that the actors, despite being handed a parody script, were told to "play it straight". Unlike many movies of the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s which were not intended as film noir but reclassified by later historians as "film noir", "Beat The Devil" started out as a film noir precisely because authors Truman Capote and John Huston (Huston also directed) set out to parody film noir. There is no such thing as "hallmarks of a film noir" precisely because film noir is a style, not a genre. I found Houston's film to be delightfully entertaining and I'd recommend it to one and all! The book I cited might prove interesting to those who'd like to know more about the real rush to snap up African uranium ore. The foreign race for uranium ore occurred in the nation now known as Democratic Republic of the Congo, which was known as Belgian Congo when this film was made.
In the event, that part of Africa had nothing to do with the Western rush for uranium ore during the 20th century. British East Africa ceased to exist in 1920. Much reference is made in the film to a location called "British East" although East Africa Protectorate a.k.a. Ltd., 2016) since the film's MacGuffin is uranium ore in Africa. Having screened this John Marcellus Huston film 'Beat the Devil' (London: Romulus Films Ltd., 1953) three times already, I felt it might be helpful-albeit tangentially-to mention the Susan Williams book 'Spies in the Congo: The Race for the Ore that Built the Atomic Bomb' (London: C.
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