The Devil's Disciple
Original window card
Directed byGuy Hamilton
Screenplay byJohn Dighton
Roland Kibbee
Based onThe Devil's Disciple
1897 play
by George Bernard Shaw
Produced byHarold Hecht
Starring
Narrated byPeter Leeds
CinematographyJack Hildyard
Edited byAlan Osbiston
Music byRichard Rodney Bennett
Production
companies
Distributed byUnited Artists
Release date
20 August 1959
Running time
83 minutes
CountriesUnited Kingdom
United States
LanguageEnglish
Budget$1.5 million[1]
Box office$1.8 million (est. US/ Canada rentals)[2]

The Devil's Disciple is a 1959 British-American film adaptation of the 1897 George Bernard Shaw play The Devil's Disciple. The Anglo-American film was directed by Guy Hamilton, who replaced Alexander Mackendrick,[3] and starred Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas and Laurence Olivier. Mary Grant designed the film's costumes.

Lancaster and Douglas made several films together over the decades, including I Walk Alone (1948), Gunfight at the O.K. Corral (1957), The List of Adrian Messenger (1963), Seven Days in May (1964) and Tough Guys (1986).

Plot

Richard "Dick" Dudgeon (Kirk Douglas) is apostate and outcast from his family in colonial Websterbridge, New Hampshire, who returns their hatred with scorn. After the death of his father, who was mistakenly hanged by the British as a rebel in nearby Springtown, Dick rescues his body from the gallows, where it had been left as an example to others, and has it buried in the parish graveyard in Websterbridge. He then returns to his childhood home to hear the reading of his father's will, much to his family's dismay.

Local minister Rev. Anthony Anderson (Burt Lancaster), who was almost arrested for trying to talk the British into taking the body down, treats him with courtesy, despite Dick's self-proclaimed apostasy, but Dick's "wickedness" appalls Anderson's wife Judith (Janette Scott). To everyone's surprise, it is revealed that Dick's father secretly changed his will just before he died, leaving the bulk of his estate to Dick. Much to his shock, Dick's mother (Eva Le Gallienne) refuses to stay with him (a change from the stage play, wherein he promptly evicts his mother from her home). Dick proclaims himself a rebel against the British and scorns his family as cowards when they flee his home. In the meantime, the British discover the father's grave.

While waiting, British soldiers enter Anderson's home and arrest Dick, mistaking him for Anderson, whom they believe illegally retrieved the body. Dick allows them to take him away without revealing his actual identity. He swears Judith to secrecy lest her husband give the secret away and expose himself to arrest. Judith, in a state of great agitation, finds her husband, who asks if Dick has harmed her. Breaking her promise to Dick, Judith reveals that soldiers came to arrest Anderson but Dick went in his place, stunning Anderson, who tells Judith to have Dick keep quiet as long as possible, to give him "more start", then quickly drives away. Judith believes her husband to be a coward (not knowing he has gone to seek help from Lawyer Hawkins (Basil Sydney), secretly the leader of the local rebels) while Dick, whom she despised, she now sees as a hero.

General Burgoyne (Laurence Olivier) engages in some gentlemanly verbal repartée with Dick, coming across as a charming gentleman and Shavian realist, and he makes a number of sharp remarks about the conduct of the American Revolution and the British Army.

Meanwhile, Anderson decides to abandon his ministry and turn rebel. In Springtown, a battle is going on. Anderson finds a house that the British have commandeered that is next to their ammunition dump. Anderson sneaks into the house, fends off several British redcoats, sets his coat on fire on burning logs, and throws it out the window, exploding the British ammunition dump. Surviving relatively unscathed, he then dons the clothes of a Loyalist courier carrying an urgent message from General Howe and reaches the village where Dick is about to be hanged.

Cast

Production and reception

The play was among those by George Bernard Shaw whose film rights were purchased by Gabriel Pascal in 1938; a planned production was announced several times in the years that followed.[4] The rights were acquired from Pascal's estate by the production company of Burt Lancaster and Harold Hecht in 1955. The film was shot at Associated British Studios in Elstree, near London, England between late July and mid-October 1958.[4] In early August, the production company announced original director Alexander Mackendrick had been replaced by Guy Hamilton.[5]

A.H. Weiler in The New York Times argued admirers of Shaw's "plays would be a mite confused by this copiously edited and re-written edition of his noted lampoon of American Revolutionary events and some Englishmen involved in losing a valuable colony." This adaptation "is, somewhat disappointingly, less the biting satire of the stage and more an unevenly paced comedy-melodrama leaning heavily toward action. ... Shaw's meticulous development of character and a healthy portion of his gibes and barbs are merely shadowy effects here".[6]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Kate Buford, Burt Lancaster: An American Life, Da Capo 2000 p 190
  2. ↑ "1959: Probable Domestic Take", Variety, 6 January 1960 p 34
  3. ↑ "The Devil's Disciple". The Sticking Place. Archived from the original on 4 February 2013. Retrieved 22 November 2021.
  4. 1 2 The Devil's Disciple at the American Film Institute Catalog
  5. ↑ Pryor, Thomas M. (2 August 1958). "U.S. Studio Drops British Director; Hecht Ousts Mackendrick From 'Devil's Disciple' -- Independents Retrench". The New York Times. p. 11. Retrieved 24 July 2022.
  6. ↑ Weiler, A.H. (21 August 1959). "'Devil's Disciple"; Shaw Story Is Shown at Two Theatres". The New York Times. Retrieved 24 July 2022.
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