Film Review - We're No Angels (1955)

Three convicts escape from prison, on Devil’s Island in French Guiana; they are Joseph (Humphrey Bogart), Albert (Aldo Rey), and Jules (Peter Ustinov). They arrive at a nearby town and while there, they seek shelter within a department store and promise its owner, Felix Ducotel (Leo G. Carroll) to perform chores for him, like fixing his leaky roof in exchange for a place to stay. While situated up on the spacious roof, they look down onto the Ducotel family, through several skylights, like three angels, and they listen to every word spoken. They spy on Felix, on his wife Amelie (Joan Bennett), and on his daughter Isabelle (Gloria Talbott) and they learn that the store runs mainly on credit.

In hope of helping out the Ducotels properly, the three convicts decide to take on larger roles, using their individual, unique tricks of the trade. Joseph, a con artist who used to cook books for several nonexistent factories, acts as a salesman who sells people on ideas rather than products, earning the store a small profit right of the bat; Albert doesn’t really have a trade, seeing that he’s committed murder over the lack of an inheritance, so he just fawns over Isabelle from time to time; and Jules is a safe cracker who opens locked drawers and safes on occasion.

The film takes place during Christmas Eve and Christmas Day and as things progress positively for the Ducotels and the three convicts, a fifth and sixth wheel enter the picture in the form of Andre Trochard, played to the utmost douche by the great Basil Rathbone, and his nephew, Paul (John Baer). Andre is the owner of the store and he and Paul arrive so that they can take over the store due its plummeting sales; they immediately rub the three convicts the wrong way, treating them like servants who are far, far beneath them.

…and then starts the melodrama! Amelie is in love with Paul, whom she doesn’t yet know is actually betrothed to another woman and who also doesn’t much fancy Isabelle, and the three convicts try to solidify the kids’ romantic relationship. This is all happing while Joseph falsifies records in the store’s financial books, and Albert and Jules act as house servants, making fun of the Trochards underneath their breaths.

I won’t spoil the second half of the film, because it goes in fascinating directions, and the only things left to talk about are:

The Director: Michael Curtiz

Born Manó Kaminer, in Hungary in 1886, Curtiz had made a name for himself in the European film circuit during the early 20th century and was invited to come work in Hollywood in 1926. He is most famously known for directing one of the greatest American films, and simply one of the greatest films in general, Casablanca (1942), and other notable films (some that are also classics) that he’d directed prior to Casablanca are Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936), Black Legion (1937), The Adventures of Robin Hood (1937), Angels with Dirty Faces (1938), Dodge City (1939), The Sea Hawk (1940), Santa Fe Trail (1940), The Sea Wolf (1941), and Yankee Doodle Dandy (1942). Suffice it to say, he wasn’t just a go-to guy in terms of natural talent, Curtiz was also a very lucrative investment.

He’d also worked with great actors by the likes of Edward G. Robinson, Bette Davis, Errol Flynn, Paul Muni, Boris Karloff, Frederick March, Olivia de Havilland, Ida Lupino, John Garfield, James Cagney, and of course, the inimitable Humphrey Bogart, on several occasions. And just to name a few more excellent films that Curtiz had directed after Casablanca, there’s also Passage to Marseille (1944), Mildred Pierce (1945), and The Breaking Point (1950). One could try for a Michael Curtiz marathon, but it would take a week or two to get through it, and that would just be based on the great films that he’d directed, seeing that he has 107 credits to his name.

Curtiz was nominated for 5 Academy Awards, winning only one for Best Director, for Casablanca.

The Cinematography

Shot on both VistaVision and Technicolor, D.P. (Director of Photography) Loyal Griggs brings tremendous, hyper realized colours to this wonderful film. We’re No Angels is based on not one but two stage plays (more on that in a bit) so it looks stagey at times, but that’s never a detriment to the entertainment value of the film. All of the actors play their roles naturally enough to the point where they generally don’t tend to sound like stage performers, and the actor blocking and cinematography are standard, traditional, old-school Hollywood, which I like. Because the film is colourful, a la An American in Paris (1951), the lighting is relatively evenly distributed and everything is clear and easy to see and understand; basically, it’s all done with deep focus compositions and it looks very pretty. It does come off as stagey early on but as the film progresses and the audience acclimates to the characters and their varying situations, the staginess dissipates and the audience is fully invested in these wonderful characters’ lives.

Adaptations

We’re No Angels had originated in France in 1952 as a stage play titled “La Cuisine Des Anges“, which literally translates to “The Angel’s Kitchen”. Make of that what you will. It was successful enough to be brought over to the U.S. the following year and Jose Ferrer himself was its director. It played for roughly 10 months and focused on the interplay between the three convicts and a family of French Colonists, which obviously wasn’t the point of the Curtiz film. There are no politics to be found in this film and quite frankly, here it would be out of place. This film focuses on telling a simple yet clever and funny story of three men who were convicted of differing crimes and who helped save the lives and business of a well-meaning family in return for a hospitable, safe stay. The Ducotels are actually the ones in need of saving and as penance for their crimes, the Joseph, Albert, and Jules become their saviours and allusions to angel-like figures appear from time to time. When they first meet Andre, Joseph makes a quip about them being the “Three Wise Men”; as they stare down onto the Ducotels from the skylights, learning about them and their plights, they appear almost as angelic figures, dressed in white clothes with a bright blue sky situated behind them; and as the film ends, each of the three men (and Adolph the snake – watch the movie to learn more about him!) receive a halo hovering above their crowns. They are not literal angels, but the film has fun disguising them as figurative ones, and watching them willingly help others while atoning for their crimes is a pleasant experience.

There is also an Italian film from 1975 that goes by the same name, but it has absolutely no resemblance to either of these stage-play-based films.

In Summation

I had a lot of fun with this film and I am going to watch and review Neil Jordan’s remake next. I am, however a tad trepidatious about it because from the trailer alone, it looks to be visually drab and dreary. However, knowing that its screenplay was written by the great David Mamet (and inspired by this film), my expectations aren’t really that low. It is billed as a comedy, and perhaps a dark one, but something tells me that there might still be a small misunderstanding in the translation, and perhaps only visually. You and I shall have to wait and see!

Until the next time!

Film Review - The Mauritanian (2021)

Every once in while I like to play a game of my own devising: I choose a movie and I ask myself, “what is this movie actually about?” The idea is to strip away the plot contrivances, clichés, and action beats and focus on two important aspects: character motivations and what the movie is actually all about, overall, in a nutshell. When I look at The Mauritanian (2021), I realize that the third act of the film is what the movie is almost entirely about and I ask myself, “why didn't the entire film focus on this story rather than it being a third act revelation?” I will get back to that in a bit.

The film begins two weeks after the attack on the Twin Towers where Mohamedou Ould Slahi (Tahar Rahim) is taken from his home on suspicion of being “the man who organized 9/11”. He isn’t heard from in 3 years until one day, he pops up on radar as an inmate in the infamous Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp. He is issued an attorney, Nancy Hollander (Jodie Foster), and her task is to defend him from the charges that are brought up against him. And that’s just it: he wasn’t charged with anything.

The Mauritanian follows three central characters: Slahi, Nancy, and Stewart Couch (Benedict Cumberbatch), who lost a dear friend and army comrade on one of the planes that struck the buildings on that awful day. Stewart shows contempt and prejudice toward Slahi right off the bat and he accepts the prosecution position with glee, which, in reality, is a conflict of interest that the film never acknowledges. Nancy, on the other hand, treats Slahi like any other person she defends, but she is baffled by the fact that he wasn’t actually charged with any crimes. Nancy also has an assistant named Teri Duncan (Shailene Woodley) who’s hardly important to the story, so I won’t bring her up again. Woodley accepted a nice paycheque and that’s all there is to that.

As the story progresses, both Nancy and Stewart are met with giant hurdles featuring, but not limited to hundreds of thousands of files that had been entirely redacted, information that doesn’t contain any dates or corroborating facts, and a long confession from Slahi that appears to be inadmissible because it was collected during a time of extreme mental and physical duress.

We are all familiar with what had happened inside that “Detention Camp”, we saw the photos and read all about it for months on end. Regardless of the inmates’ crimes, many, if not most of them had been met with weeks (or months) of physical and mental torture, humiliation, and other forms of abuse and degradation. Slahi appears to have been on the receiving end of many of those inhumane atrocities, as we are shown through flashbacks that are shot in a 1.33:1 aspect ratio for no discernible reason, and the film’s “purpose” eventually comes to light. The film beats around the bush for almost 2 hours until it finally decides to admit that what happened inside the “Detention Camp” was wrong on every possible level. This “revelation” would have been far more impactful had it not already been something that we were very familiar with for many years. There is a long build up to a fizzle, and that is where the film mostly fails.

The cinematography in The Mauritanian is generally ok, sometimes it resembles any of the thousands of cop/criminalistics shows that play on TV, and the flashback sequences utilize a completely different aspect ratio, color grading, and “film grain” to accentuate a different point in time. It’s done purely for stylistic purposes and honestly, it’s distracting because the majority of the film is shot in very standards, almost milquetoast fashion.

Director Kevin Macdonald had previously shown his prowess as a fearsome storyteller and filmmaker with a kinetic directing and editing style in The Last King of Scotland (2006), but The Mauritanian could easily be confused for a straight-to-video courtroom drama with a “special segment directed by” credit. It gets by with its excellent cast and the fact that this film is inspired by a true story, but just because it is based on real people and real situations doesn’t automatically make it good film.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi was an actual detainee in the Guantanamo Bay Detention Camp, and it took him 14 years to achieve freedom. What this movie is “about” is corruption on high governmental and military levels, in which they found a scapegoat to pin the 9/11 attacks on. Throughout his 14 years of incarceration, Slahi was never charged with a single crime. Again, this is all revealed during the third act and the message slaps the audience in the face, except that the audience is already aware of the atrocities that took place inside and surrounding the Detention Camp, so it’s not much of a revelation. The film tries to juggle both Slahi’s 14 terrible years and the lies, secrets, and illegal activities that that had surrounded the manhunt for the terrorists. It’s a juggling act that features five chainsaws and a one armed juggler, it simply doesn’t work. The juggler also manages to, mysteriously shoot himself in the foot too, somehow.

Mohamedou Ould Slahi deserves a better film than this, and this story deserved a better, more politically minded screenwriter. It really is a shame because as good as Foster and Cumberbatch are in this film, Rahim is the standout. I first noticed his acting chops in the utterly excellent, gripping, and disturbing masterpiece Un Prophet (2009), and here he proves that he’s still an excellent actor even when performing in English. As Slahi, he brings realism and humanity to the film through a grounded performance, and we feel everything that he feels through his expressive face. He is an actor capable of conveying several emotions, and almost all at once. Rahim is the star of the film for several reasons, and he is the reason that I almost recommend this film. Almost.

The Mauritanian is not currently available for streaming, but it is available in theatres in select cities and countries.