| USA, 1955 | Comedy | Mainstream | Trailer |
Today’s is a very special Corner post. It’s Christmas day, so I am going to talk about a Christmas movie. But, you all know I am sort of unconventional, so I want to talk about an underknown classic from 1955. And, it’s starring Humphrey Bogart, who was born a December 25th like this 121 years ago.
Christmas movies, the way the big audience usually invokes them in their minds when hearing the term, include a formulaic message about love, understanding, family and sometimes descriptions of Christmas-ness as it’s marketised by the USA homogenisation engine. However, this particular movie deviates itself from the norm by presenting a radically different setting and premise, at first glance at least, which offers an interesting take on the topic.
The topic of this movie is redemption. We follow the story of three escaped prisoners from Devil’s Island, an old French penitentiary system from colonial times in the Caribbean sea. As part of their plan to escape, the three main characters need to gather money to purchase three ship tickets to mainland. They begin with small delictive deeds, but when they want to get deeper and start planning to rob a store to get a juicier loot, they observe the owner’s family and get touched by their problems. So our three jailbirds decide to help them during their troubles, as a way to get the money they long for as a payment. Spending Christmas night with the family makes them reflect and rethink on humanity and what good deeds are and mean, so in the end they nonchalantly decide to return to prison, alleging that living in a tropical island isn’t a thing as bad, assuring though they will try to escape again the following year.
The Christmas-y fundamental detail here is clearly highlighted when the store owner’s family, touched by the apparent good heart and humanity of the main characters, compares them with angels sent upon them by the Lord’s Mercy in such a significant date. This is what gives the name to the movie. Aside, it spends a good part of its length showing how the cast sets the Christmas celebration and decor. The fact that it takes place during the French Caribbean time gives it a really unique look, clearly different from the typical “white Christmas” fomented by Hollywood’s gears during decades.
The overall tone of the movie is light and hilarious. Here, Humphrey Bogart -who already showed he could well feature in comedies ever since Sabrina– and Peter Ustinov -a paradigmatic comedy actor- form an excellent duo as the brain and the naïf members of the trio respectively, being the third one of the flirty type. The comedy isn’t overly laughter-inducing, but more of the satisfying, wholesome and smileable kind.
Overall, it is a really solid film, featuring excellent roles with a simple but enough likeable premise, a good rhythm that never goes down, and shows a different kind of Christmas spirit in a more exotic ambiance. It leaves a really good aftertaste.
Classics really could make something like this work.