I can't think of a more esteemed movie that has not yet made it to DVD in the United States. People loved "The African Queen," with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, when John Huston made it in 1951, and, I daresay, people love it just as much today. Yet for complications I do not understand, as of this writing, no U.S. studio has yet issued it on disc. (It was originally a Romulus-Horizon production, which Fox released on VHS tape some years ago, and to which I understand Paramount now owns the U.S. DVD rights.) The version reviewed here is a region-free Korean import from Cine Korea, available on-line from various sources including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
"The African Queen" is an adventure, a romance, and a comedy, yet it tackles none of these genres according to accepted movie custom. The adventure takes place in German-controlled central-east Africa in 1914, at the outset the First World War, with the main characters--a Canadian man and an English woman--trying desperately to escape the Germans. They sail down the Ulonga-Bora River toward a lake in the man's dilapidated, rattrap little steamboat named the "African Queen." Once at the lake, the pair intend to blow up a German gunboat, using the "Queen" as the ramming device for a pair of homemade torpedoes.
The romance and the comedy take place aboard the "Queen" between a middle-aged, drunken sot, Charlie Allnut (Bogart), and a middle-aged lady, prim and straight-laced, Rose Sayer (Hepburn). A more nontraditional adventure story and a more unconventional romantic comedy you couldn't imagine.
Allnut travels up and down the East-African rivers delivering supplies to the colonists and missionaries there, but mostly he drinks. He's unshaven, unkempt, and usually less than sober, hardly one's image of a movie hero. Like many of Bogart's roles, it was a gamble. By 1951 Bogart was one of the biggest stars in the world, enabling him to take a chance in 1948 playing a thorough reprobate in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and getting away with it to public and critical approval; and, yes, he got it away with it again in "The African Queen." Although, to be fair, his character here is nothing like the greedy, dishonest scoundrel he played in "Sierra Madre."
Hepburn, well into her forties by this time and at an age when Hollywood usually abandons such actresses, took a chance, too, playing the prudish, almost Puritanical spinster who eventually falls for the grubby, grizzled, thoroughly egregious Allnut. The two players perform fabulously well against type, each bringing out the best in the other, both as actors and as characters in the story. Before long, it's hard to tell the difference.
This was the fourth of five movies Huston would make with Bogart and his only one with Hepburn. Huston co-wrote the screenplay with James Agee and Peter Viertel from a novel by C.S. Forester, turning the story into a tight, productive motion picture that is remarkably concise and pointed. There isn't a wasted moment, a wasted gesture, or a wasted line. The plot, the characters, and the action move along efficiently, with the odd-couple relationship of Bogart and Hepburn keeping the boat and the movie afloat. For his part, Bogart won an Oscar for Best Actor, and the Academy nominated Hepburn, Huston, and Agee for Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Writing respectively. Look also in the cast for Robert Morley as Miss Sayer's brother, a Christian missionary, and Theodore Bikel (who at this time is still going strong on stage and screen) as the first officer aboard the German ship.
To make the movie more realistic, Huston took his cast and crew to the Congo, Uganda, and Zaire, as well as to England, Turkey, and Southern California for filming. The location shooting became the stuff of legend, and Clint Eastwood chronicled some of it in "White Hunter Black Heart" (1990).
My parents took me to see "The African Queen" when I was a kid, and two things always stuck out in my memory: the fort on the hill (really neat) and the leeches (really icky). Almost a quarter of a century later, Katharine Hepburn would team up with John Wayne in "Rooster Cogburn," a movie that used virtually the same formula but to much duller effect.
Trivia: According to John Eastman in his book "Retakes" (Ballantine, New York, 1989), "Columbia Studios bought the original C.S. Forester novel for Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, then, in 1939, sold it to Warner Bros. for Bette Davis and David Niven. When Davis fell out with the producer, 20th Century-Fox bought the property, and John Huston unearthed it there twelve years later. Plagued by army ants, black wasps, dysentery, and steaming jungle heat, cast and crew suffered miserably in the African location scenes. Only Huston and Bogart escaped sickness (owing, they maintained, to their daily Scotch intake.) The actual 'African Queen,' a retired riverboat, towed four rafts down the Ruiki. On one, a mock-up replica of the boat provided a stage set, while others held equipment and private quarters for Hepburn. Bogart, at first lukewarm about his role and hating any sort of location work, gradually absorbed himself in the character of Charlie Allnut, but he never ceased complaining about the jungle discomforts and Hepburn's incessant, bewildering cheerfulness.... Screenwriter James Agee, whose disabling heart attack put an end to this work on the script, intended the river journey to symbolize the act of love, and he strongly criticized the upbeat finale concocted by Huston and writer Peter Viertel."
"The African Queen" is an adventure, a romance, and a comedy, yet it tackles none of these genres according to accepted movie custom. The adventure takes place in German-controlled central-east Africa in 1914, at the outset the First World War, with the main characters--a Canadian man and an English woman--trying desperately to escape the Germans. They sail down the Ulonga-Bora River toward a lake in the man's dilapidated, rattrap little steamboat named the "African Queen." Once at the lake, the pair intend to blow up a German gunboat, using the "Queen" as the ramming device for a pair of homemade torpedoes.
The romance and the comedy take place aboard the "Queen" between a middle-aged, drunken sot, Charlie Allnut (Bogart), and a middle-aged lady, prim and straight-laced, Rose Sayer (Hepburn). A more nontraditional adventure story and a more unconventional romantic comedy you couldn't imagine.
Allnut travels up and down the East-African rivers delivering supplies to the colonists and missionaries there, but mostly he drinks. He's unshaven, unkempt, and usually less than sober, hardly one's image of a movie hero. Like many of Bogart's roles, it was a gamble. By 1951 Bogart was one of the biggest stars in the world, enabling him to take a chance in 1948 playing a thorough reprobate in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and getting away with it to public and critical approval; and, yes, he got it away with it again in "The African Queen." Although, to be fair, his character here is nothing like the greedy, dishonest scoundrel he played in "Sierra Madre."
Hepburn, well into her forties by this time and at an age when Hollywood usually abandons such actresses, took a chance, too, playing the prudish, almost Puritanical spinster who eventually falls for the grubby, grizzled, thoroughly egregious Allnut. The two players perform fabulously well against type, each bringing out the best in the other, both as actors and as characters in the story. Before long, it's hard to tell the difference.
This was the fourth of five movies Huston would make with Bogart and his only one with Hepburn. Huston co-wrote the screenplay with James Agee and Peter Viertel from a novel by C.S. Forester, turning the story into a tight, productive motion picture that is remarkably concise and pointed. There isn't a wasted moment, a wasted gesture, or a wasted line. The plot, the characters, and the action move along efficiently, with the odd-couple relationship of Bogart and Hepburn keeping the boat and the movie afloat. For his part, Bogart won an Oscar for Best Actor, and the Academy nominated Hepburn, Huston, and Agee for Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Writing respectively. Look also in the cast for Robert Morley as Miss Sayer's brother, a Christian missionary, and Theodore Bikel (who at this time is still going strong on stage and screen) as the first officer aboard the German ship.
To make the movie more realistic, Huston took his cast and crew to the Congo, Uganda, and Zaire, as well as to England, Turkey, and Southern California for filming. The location shooting became the stuff of legend, and Clint Eastwood chronicled some of it in "White Hunter Black Heart" (1990).
My parents took me to see "The African Queen" when I was a kid, and two things always stuck out in my memory: the fort on the hill (really neat) and the leeches (really icky). Almost a quarter of a century later, Katharine Hepburn would team up with John Wayne in "Rooster Cogburn," a movie that used virtually the same formula but to much duller effect.
Trivia: According to John Eastman in his book "Retakes" (Ballantine, New York, 1989), "Columbia Studios bought the original C.S. Forester novel for Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, then, in 1939, sold it to Warner Bros. for Bette Davis and David Niven. When Davis fell out with the producer, 20th Century-Fox bought the property, and John Huston unearthed it there twelve years later. Plagued by army ants, black wasps, dysentery, and steaming jungle heat, cast and crew suffered miserably in the African location scenes. Only Huston and Bogart escaped sickness (owing, they maintained, to their daily Scotch intake.) The actual 'African Queen,' a retired riverboat, towed four rafts down the Ruiki. On one, a mock-up replica of the boat provided a stage set, while others held equipment and private quarters for Hepburn. Bogart, at first lukewarm about his role and hating any sort of location work, gradually absorbed himself in the character of Charlie Allnut, but he never ceased complaining about the jungle discomforts and Hepburn's incessant, bewildering cheerfulness.... Screenwriter James Agee, whose disabling heart attack put an end to this work on the script, intended the river journey to symbolize the act of love, and he strongly criticized the upbeat finale concocted by Huston and writer Peter Viertel."
I can't think of a more esteemed movie that has not yet made it to DVD in the United States. People loved "The African Queen," with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, when John Huston made it in 1951, and, I daresay, people love it just as much today. Yet for complications I do not understand, as of this writing, no U.S. studio has yet issued it on disc. (It was originally a Romulus-Horizon production, which Fox released on VHS tape some years ago, and to which I understand Paramount now owns the U.S. DVD rights.) The version reviewed here is a region-free Korean import from Cine Korea, available on-line from various sources including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.
"The African Queen" is an adventure, a romance, and a comedy, yet it tackles none of these genres according to accepted movie custom. The adventure takes place in German-controlled central-east Africa in 1914, at the outset the First World War, with the main characters--a Canadian man and an English woman--trying desperately to escape the Germans. They sail down the Ulonga-Bora River toward a lake in the man's dilapidated, rattrap little steamboat named the "African Queen." Once at the lake, the pair intend to blow up a German gunboat, using the "Queen" as the ramming device for a pair of homemade torpedoes.
The romance and the comedy take place aboard the "Queen" between a middle-aged, drunken sot, Charlie Allnut (Bogart), and a middle-aged lady, prim and straight-laced, Rose Sayer (Hepburn). A more nontraditional adventure story and a more unconventional romantic comedy you couldn't imagine.
Allnut travels up and down the East-African rivers delivering supplies to the colonists and missionaries there, but mostly he drinks. He's unshaven, unkempt, and usually less than sober, hardly one's image of a movie hero. Like many of Bogart's roles, it was a gamble. By 1951 Bogart was one of the biggest stars in the world, enabling him to take a chance in 1948 playing a thorough reprobate in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and getting away with it to public and critical approval; and, yes, he got it away with it again in "The African Queen." Although, to be fair, his character here is nothing like the greedy, dishonest scoundrel he played in "Sierra Madre."
Hepburn, well into her forties by this time and at an age when Hollywood usually abandons such actresses, took a chance, too, playing the prudish, almost Puritanical spinster who eventually falls for the grubby, grizzled, thoroughly egregious Allnut. The two players perform fabulously well against type, each bringing out the best in the other, both as actors and as characters in the story. Before long, it's hard to tell the difference.
This was the fourth of five movies Huston would make with Bogart and his only one with Hepburn. Huston co-wrote the screenplay with James Agee and Peter Viertel from a novel by C.S. Forester, turning the story into a tight, productive motion picture that is remarkably concise and pointed. There isn't a wasted moment, a wasted gesture, or a wasted line. The plot, the characters, and the action move along efficiently, with the odd-couple relationship of Bogart and Hepburn keeping the boat and the movie afloat. For his part, Bogart won an Oscar for Best Actor, and the Academy nominated Hepburn, Huston, and Agee for Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Writing respectively. Look also in the cast for Robert Morley as Miss Sayer's brother, a Christian missionary, and Theodore Bikel (who at this time is still going strong on stage and screen) as the first officer aboard the German ship.
To make the movie more realistic, Huston took his cast and crew to the Congo, Uganda, and Zaire, as well as to England, Turkey, and Southern California for filming. The location shooting became the stuff of legend, and Clint Eastwood chronicled some of it in "White Hunter Black Heart" (1990).
My parents took me to see "The African Queen" when I was a kid, and two things always stuck out in my memory: the fort on the hill (really neat) and the leeches (really icky). Almost a quarter of a century later, Katharine Hepburn would team up with John Wayne in "Rooster Cogburn," a movie that used virtually the same formula but to much duller effect.
Trivia: According to John Eastman in his book "Retakes" (Ballantine, New York, 1989), "Columbia Studios bought the original C.S. Forester novel for Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, then, in 1939, sold it to Warner Bros. for Bette Davis and David Niven. When Davis fell out with the producer, 20th Century-Fox bought the property, and John Huston unearthed it there twelve years later. Plagued by army ants, black wasps, dysentery, and steaming jungle heat, cast and crew suffered miserably in the African location scenes. Only Huston and Bogart escaped sickness (owing, they maintained, to their daily Scotch intake.) The actual 'African Queen,' a retired riverboat, towed four rafts down the Ruiki. On one, a mock-up replica of the boat provided a stage set, while others held equipment and private quarters for Hepburn. Bogart, at first lukewarm about his role and hating any sort of location work, gradually absorbed himself in the character of Charlie Allnut, but he never ceased complaining about the jungle discomforts and Hepburn's incessant, bewildering cheerfulness.... Screenwriter James Agee, whose disabling heart attack put an end to this work on the script, intended the river journey to symbolize the act of love, and he strongly criticized the upbeat finale concocted by Huston and writer Peter Viertel."
"The African Queen" is an adventure, a romance, and a comedy, yet it tackles none of these genres according to accepted movie custom. The adventure takes place in German-controlled central-east Africa in 1914, at the outset the First World War, with the main characters--a Canadian man and an English woman--trying desperately to escape the Germans. They sail down the Ulonga-Bora River toward a lake in the man's dilapidated, rattrap little steamboat named the "African Queen." Once at the lake, the pair intend to blow up a German gunboat, using the "Queen" as the ramming device for a pair of homemade torpedoes.
The romance and the comedy take place aboard the "Queen" between a middle-aged, drunken sot, Charlie Allnut (Bogart), and a middle-aged lady, prim and straight-laced, Rose Sayer (Hepburn). A more nontraditional adventure story and a more unconventional romantic comedy you couldn't imagine.
Allnut travels up and down the East-African rivers delivering supplies to the colonists and missionaries there, but mostly he drinks. He's unshaven, unkempt, and usually less than sober, hardly one's image of a movie hero. Like many of Bogart's roles, it was a gamble. By 1951 Bogart was one of the biggest stars in the world, enabling him to take a chance in 1948 playing a thorough reprobate in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and getting away with it to public and critical approval; and, yes, he got it away with it again in "The African Queen." Although, to be fair, his character here is nothing like the greedy, dishonest scoundrel he played in "Sierra Madre."
Hepburn, well into her forties by this time and at an age when Hollywood usually abandons such actresses, took a chance, too, playing the prudish, almost Puritanical spinster who eventually falls for the grubby, grizzled, thoroughly egregious Allnut. The two players perform fabulously well against type, each bringing out the best in the other, both as actors and as characters in the story. Before long, it's hard to tell the difference.
This was the fourth of five movies Huston would make with Bogart and his only one with Hepburn. Huston co-wrote the screenplay with James Agee and Peter Viertel from a novel by C.S. Forester, turning the story into a tight, productive motion picture that is remarkably concise and pointed. There isn't a wasted moment, a wasted gesture, or a wasted line. The plot, the characters, and the action move along efficiently, with the odd-couple relationship of Bogart and Hepburn keeping the boat and the movie afloat. For his part, Bogart won an Oscar for Best Actor, and the Academy nominated Hepburn, Huston, and Agee for Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Writing respectively. Look also in the cast for Robert Morley as Miss Sayer's brother, a Christian missionary, and Theodore Bikel (who at this time is still going strong on stage and screen) as the first officer aboard the German ship.
To make the movie more realistic, Huston took his cast and crew to the Congo, Uganda, and Zaire, as well as to England, Turkey, and Southern California for filming. The location shooting became the stuff of legend, and Clint Eastwood chronicled some of it in "White Hunter Black Heart" (1990).
My parents took me to see "The African Queen" when I was a kid, and two things always stuck out in my memory: the fort on the hill (really neat) and the leeches (really icky). Almost a quarter of a century later, Katharine Hepburn would team up with John Wayne in "Rooster Cogburn," a movie that used virtually the same formula but to much duller effect.
Trivia: According to John Eastman in his book "Retakes" (Ballantine, New York, 1989), "Columbia Studios bought the original C.S. Forester novel for Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, then, in 1939, sold it to Warner Bros. for Bette Davis and David Niven. When Davis fell out with the producer, 20th Century-Fox bought the property, and John Huston unearthed it there twelve years later. Plagued by army ants, black wasps, dysentery, and steaming jungle heat, cast and crew suffered miserably in the African location scenes. Only Huston and Bogart escaped sickness (owing, they maintained, to their daily Scotch intake.) The actual 'African Queen,' a retired riverboat, towed four rafts down the Ruiki. On one, a mock-up replica of the boat provided a stage set, while others held equipment and private quarters for Hepburn. Bogart, at first lukewarm about his role and hating any sort of location work, gradually absorbed himself in the character of Charlie Allnut, but he never ceased complaining about the jungle discomforts and Hepburn's incessant, bewildering cheerfulness.... Screenwriter James Agee, whose disabling heart attack put an end to this work on the script, intended the river journey to symbolize the act of love, and he strongly criticized the upbeat finale concocted by Huston and writer Peter Viertel."
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