NR | 1 h 46 min | Comedy | 1955
Humphrey Bogart was born on Dec. 25. After nearly 25 years of playing a poker-faced tough guy, he’d probably been itching for some fun. So near the end of his career, he tried his hand at playing a softie. He teamed up one last time with trusted director Michael Curtiz and picked a screenplay about crooks turning compassionate on Christmas Eve that proved too riotous to resist.
It’s 1895. Three escaped convicts from the French penal colony of Devil’s Island, French Guiana, turn up at Cayenne, French Guiana’s capital, on Christmas Eve. For all their mock malice, they look like they wouldn’t harm a snake; in fact, the hulking Albert (Aldo Ray), carries a pet snake (offscreen) around in a tiny bamboo cage. Ace forger Joseph (Bogart) is the brain behind the trio. And Jules (Peter Ustinov) looks more like a teddy bear than a scheming safecracker.
On the prowl for easy pickings, the convicts stumble upon needy store manager Felix Ducotel (Leo G. Carroll), who lives with his kindly wife Amelie (Joan Bennett) and wide-eyed, virtuous daughter Isabelle (Gloria Talbott). The men aim to rob the store bare before moving on, but it’s Christmas eve, and they warm to the family. They start off pretending to fix a leaky roof and end up fixing a lot else, including a memorable Christmas Eve dinner. In the store, they persuade dithering customers to pick products that no one else will, and dodgy ones to pay instead of endlessly teasing out credit from an indulgent Felix.
Felix merely runs the store for his cash-rich, conceited cousin, Andre Trochard (Basil Rathbone), who’s furious at Felix’s weakness in repeatedly selling on credit. Worse, Andre suspects that Isabelle fancies his nephew Paul Trochard (John Baer) because of the wealth he’s just bequeathed him. To Isabelle’s anguish, Paul believes his uncle and stays aloof from her. Meanwhile, Andre plans to scrutinize the store’s accounts to accuse Felix of mismanagement and excuse washing his hands of the guileless family.
But when Andre plays his hand, the convicts, familiar with the scheming ways of schemers, decide to give the beleaguered Felix and his family a Christmas gift of their own.
Some sequences are downright hilarious: Bogart fits out a plump customer in a jacket that’s obviously too tight for him. Ustinov taunts Bogart for wearing a maid’s kitchen apron. All three hold a private mock court hearing to decide Andre’s guilt. Later, they cut cards to decide whether and when to tell Andre that there’s a lethal snake in the bamboo cage that he’s snatched from them.
Hark! The Herald Angels Sing
Ray’s beguiling smile, raspy voice, easy-going line delivery, and six-foot-tall presence are the perfect foil to his despondent-looking co-actors. Ustinov has the best lines and sparkles with his every glance, every expression, every word, and every sound. Asked what they were in jail for, he admits with sheepish understatement, “None of us went to jail for biting our nails.”Joseph hoodwinks a store customer into buying a comb and brush set, then rushes back into the house to ask Amelie to change the large currency note he’s received. She’s delighted with the sudden income, but exclaims, “Oh, but he’s entirely bald.” Deadpan, Joseph suggests, “Then, we’d better hurry before he finds out.”
The stunning 45-year-old Joan Bennett sings the fleeting but haunting track, “Sentimental Moments,” and Bogart, Ray, and Ustinov sing the track “Three Angels.”
Sure, there’s lots to quibble about.
The matter-of-fact way the town accepts convicts as regular citizens makes you wonder why they’ve not been appointed governors already. Of course, they’re costumed so convincingly that one tells the other, “You could get picked up just for the way you look!”
The gowns gracing Bennett and Talbott seem more at home in an aristocratic bungalow than in a needy store-manager’s house. Felix is too mild and muddle-headed to be storekeeper in the first place. The ending is too neat. And it’s hard to imagine crooks looking for their hearts of gold, let alone finding them overnight, even if it’s Christmas.
But none of these oddities spoils the fun. Not if you see the whole thing as a fairy tale, where three men become wise enough to find meaning in going the distance to pay cheery homage to a virtuous family. Never mind that the loose ends here literally tie themselves up, like tidy little Christmas ribbons.
