Going for a more upbeat film than last week, We’re No Angels is one of the few comedies Humphrey Bogart made, and one of his best. Bogie, Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray, along with their pet Mamba Adolpe, escape from Devil’s Island. Stuck in a small French coastal town over the Christmas Holiday while they wait for a ship to take them out of the country. They get handyman jobs with a kindly merchant, planning to rob his store but end up instead helping the family make the store a success while Adolphe solves the problem of the unscrupulous lease owner of the store in his own way. At the end they decide the outside world isn’t really for them and decide to return to prison.
A fun and lighthearted film, it has some wonderful images, a scene where the three convicts are working on the roof and look down through a window at the family having dinner is a poignant reminder to them that they will always be outsiders. Ustinov, a scene stealer of the first magnitude, pulls back for once and fits in well with Bogie and Ray, supplying some great one liners to punctuate their scenes together. There are some fun scenes of Ray flirting with a shy Gloria Talbot and then ends up playing cupid for her. Basil Rathbone plays the sleazy lease holder you can’t wait to see get his comeuppance.
But the film is Bogie’s and he shine in a series of vignettes where he decides to help the famiy make the store turn a profit and becomes the slickest salesman on the planet. The real highlight is where he convinces a bald man to buy a silver comb and brush set. Comedies don’t get any funnier.
I won’t be putting out another suggestion next week, too close to Christmas, but after Christmas I will be putting up a New Years film suggestion.
