"If crime showed on a man's face, there wouldn't be any mirrors."

With the success of Sabrina (1954), Humphrey Bogart proved that he was adept at comedy. This fact was not lost on the people at Paramount, who cast him again in a comedic role, this time in We’re No Angels (1955).

This movie is not really all that funny or all that great, but it is one of those movies about the spirit of Christmas. It is about three Devil’s Island convicts who are on work release. They decide that there is a chance to make a break for it and take it. They would have been successful in escaping, had they not slipped up at a local shop. Here they witness a shopkeeper, who they were going to rob, have some of his own problems. Bogie and his two other convicts take pity on the shopkeeper and his family once they see them.

The three who had volunteered to help patch up the shopkeeper’s roof decide to make a long stay and forget their chances of escape. They get to really like the family. The mother, played by Joan Bennett is attractive enough to catch Bogie’s eye, while the family’s daughter, Isabelle, is attractive enough to catch the eye of the two other convicts, played by Peter Ustinov and Aldo Ray.

They help prepare dinner for the family, Bogie manages to “borrow” a turkey from a local farm after making his best attempts to buy the bird with no money. They make themselves great servants for the family that has fallen on hard times. The father’s cousin wants to take over the shop and when he arrives to claim the shop that the father has run into the ground because of his generosity, the three convicts rush to cook the books.

They fail in this attempt and seems like the nice people will lose their shop. Of course, this being a funny, sentimental story, the three convicts use their associate named Adolph to help them save the day. Adolph happens to be an adder who escapes from the box he is kept in and miraculously gives anyone who happens to be mean to the family a nice bite.

I probably made the movie more complex than it really is in my description above. Really it is just a lavish Christmas picture that is filled with some laughs, but a lot of sentimentality. The movie was shot in color with a big budget and directed by Michael Curtiz, one of Bogie’s favorite directors.

Bogie is good as the straight man of the group. Basil Rathbone is good as the cousin to Leo G. Carroll’s shop owner/father of the family. The mother, Joan Bennett has an interesting story though. She had been blackballed in Hollywood for many years. Her husband was Walter Wanger, a neighbor to Bogie and big shot producer in Hollywood. In 1951, the Wanger family was involved in a bit of a scandal when Wanger took exception to his wife having an affair with her agent. Wanger took matters into his own hands and shot the agent in the groin. The agent recovered and Wanger spent a few months in jail. Bennett was the one who got the worst of this deal. She was unable to find work, despite having over sixty-five film credits to her name including playing the mother in Father of the Bride (1950). When We’re No Angels was shot, it was only her second screen appearance in the past three years. The producers at Paramount did not want to use her, but buckled when Bogie stood by her and said he wouldn’t do the picture unless she was cast as the mother. Bogie and Paramount were rewarded when she gave a great performance.

We’re No Angels is a nice, family, holiday movie. It is good clean fun and something enjoyable for all.