We're No Angels

Christmas Eve in French Guiana. Three convicts escaped from Devil's Island take shelter in a French merchant's shop. The plan is simple: rob the family and board a ship the next day. But the family treats them well, they sit down to Christmas dinner and the plan falls apart. What follows is three criminals rescuing the household by their own methods, which do not much involve the law. Michael Curtiz directed. The source is Albert Husson's 1952 play La Cuisine des Anges. Humphrey Bogart, Peter Ustinov, Aldo Ray and Joan Bennett are in the cast, with Leo G. Carroll as the head of the family and Basil Rathbone as the unpleasant relative. The best-known detail is an animal: Aldo Ray's character keeps a venomous snake named Adolph in a straw basket, and that snake is behind every problem the three men solve. This was Bogart's last film with Curtiz, after many together in the Warner years. It was also a break for him from the hard characters he usually played. Who it is for: viewers who like fifties Hollywood comedy and want to see Bogart enjoying himself. Who it is not for: anyone expecting a real crime film. The tone is light throughout and the convicts' pasts are never taken seriously.