It is frightful to consider: When the 1951 Oscar nominations were announced, John Huston placed among the candidates for writing and directing—not for his film that year that mattered, and still matters, The Red Badge of Courage, but for an amiable, rollicking romance and World War I adventure that brought in the bucks: The African Queen. (Huston shared the writing nomination with former film critic James Agee.) It is a colorful, spirited, farfetched and inconsequential entertainment. Even with the studio tampering that kept Huston’s great anti-war film about the American Civil War from being the masterpiece he had hoped for, it towers above The African Queen. The latter was such a big hit, though, that Huston made a partial remake of it only six years later!: Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison.
I am not going to get into the plot particulars of this thin piece of material based on C.S. Forester’s 1935 novel; who, after all, hasn’t seen The African Queen? Rather, I wish to note an area in which the film comes up incredibly short. Huston, actors and crew made the film in the Belgian Congo and British Uganda, the principal part of which depicts a journey down the Ulonga River in the African Queen, Charlie Allnut’s panting steamboat. On this trip, during which Charlie and the spinster missionary he is evacuating, Rose Sayer, fall in love, cuts are made to show the animals that inhabit the area. These inserts are so clumsily done that the whole procedure looks fake, as if Huston & Company weren’t actually in Africa. To our eyes nothing rings true.
Humphrey Bogart is a great actor, and I’m glad he won an Oscar for something; but for this? Allnut is a drunken, eye-rolling cartoon. Katharine Hepburn warms up her initially prim Rosie nicely; her acting is head and shoulders above every other aspect of the film. Opposite John Wayne, she more or less reprised the role, as Eula, in Rooster Cogburn (1975).
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THE AFRICAN QUEEN (John Huston, 1951)
It is frightful to consider: When the 1951 Oscar nominations were announced, John Huston placed among the candidates for writing and directing—not for his film that year that mattered, and still matters, The Red Badge of Courage, but for an amiable, rollicking romance and World War I adventure that brought in the bucks: The African Queen. (Huston shared the writing nomination with former film critic James Agee.) It is a colorful, spirited, farfetched and inconsequential entertainment. Even with the studio tampering that kept Huston’s great anti-war film about the American Civil War from being the masterpiece he had hoped for, it towers above The African Queen. The latter was such a big hit, though, that Huston made a partial remake of it only six years later!: Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison.
I am not going to get into the plot particulars of this thin piece of material based on C.S. Forester’s 1935 novel; who, after all, hasn’t seen The African Queen? Rather, I wish to note an area in which the film comes up incredibly short. Huston, actors and crew made the film in the Belgian Congo and British Uganda, the principal part of which depicts a journey down the Ulonga River in the African Queen, Charlie Allnut’s panting steamboat. On this trip, during which Charlie and the spinster missionary he is evacuating, Rose Sayer, fall in love, cuts are made to show the animals that inhabit the area. These inserts are so clumsily done that the whole procedure looks fake, as if Huston & Company weren’t actually in Africa. To our eyes nothing rings true.
Humphrey Bogart is a great actor, and I’m glad he won an Oscar for something; but for this? Allnut is a drunken, eye-rolling cartoon. Katharine Hepburn warms up her initially prim Rosie nicely; her acting is head and shoulders above every other aspect of the film. Opposite John Wayne, she more or less reprised the role, as Eula, in Rooster Cogburn (1975).
This entry was posted on July 5, 2008 at 6:40 pm and is filed under Informal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.