We're No Angels on Devil's Island

Humphrey Bogart’s birthday really was Christmas Day. There’s an ongoing belief that it was changed by the studio to make him more interesting, as though Bogart needed to be made more interesting, but in fact you can look up the census records. It’s as true as the fact that Samuel L. Jackson was born on the winter solstice. Does that make Humphrey Bogart the second coming of Jesus? Um, no, probably not. A lot of people are born on Christmas. I wouldn’t say Sissy Spacek or CCH Pounder are the second coming, either, but consider, MST3K fans, that it’s also Larry Csonka’s birthday.

Anyway, here, he’s Joseph. He, Albert (Aldo Ray), and Jules (Peter Ustinov) have escaped from the prison on Devil’s Island and are trying to find their way off the island. They’re in the town and end up stealing a letter intended for Felix Ducotel (Leo G. Carroll), and they persuade him to let them fix the roof with the intention of hiding up there through the day, sneaking into the store at night, robbing it, and making their way to a ship quarantined in the harbor. However, they become deeply intrigued by the family’s problems and decide to help them.

And yet this is somehow more of a Christmas movie than most of the ones we’ve covered so far. It’s not just that they escape on Christmas Eve. It’s that they are canonically intended to be the angels the Ducotel family needs. They’ve been sent to the island after Felix’s cousin, Andre Trochard (Basil Rathbone), ruined Felix’s business but “took pity” on him and let him run Trochard’s store there. His daughter, Isabelle (Gloria Talbott), is in love with Trochard’s nephew Paul (John Baer), whom Trochard intends to marry for business reasons. The three convicts are there, it seems, to fix all this.

Perhaps my hottest take on the movie is that Jules is bisexual. He talks a lot about women, cheerfully fantasizing about Isabelle, her mother Amelie (Joan Bennett), customer Mme. Parole (Lea Penman), and Sarah Bernhardt (not appearing in this film). However, he appears to be not-quite-flirting with Joseph through a fair amount of the picture, and there are several other interactions with male characters that make me wonder. Maybe it’s Ustinov himself; I know nothing about his sexuality but man he had Big Bisexual Energy.

The clear problem with Felix Ducotel is that he’s too nice. Mme. Parole returns a bottle of Chartreuse she bought early in the picture and complains that it’s full of water, and I personally have no doubt that she drank it all and refilled the bottle herself, and Joseph clearly thinks so, too. At the beginning of the movie, Joseph observes that Ducotel is known for giving credit. But his gentle nature and the love his family has for one another does more to reform the three men than ten years in the prison has, which should teach people something but after all that only happens in fiction, right?