Film: 'The African Queen' (1951)

A fascinating movie, adapted from the CS Forester novel, directed by John Huston, and featuring Huston's poster boy Humphrey Bogart as well as my favourite Katherine Hepburn. A lunatic endeavour filmed partly in Africa on a real river, and mainly as a two-hander between two screen icons: What could possibly go wrong? We'll never know, as it actually worked, and the unlikely combination of Bogart of Hepburn is as much responsible as anything else. However, let's not get ahead of ourselves.

In 'The African Queen', a missionary and his spinster (oh, how I loathe that term) sister are tending to their flock in African jungle, when World War I breaks out, and the Germans promptly abduct the native villagers, burn everything to the ground, and indirectly kill the missionary with a broken heart. The sister, Rosie Sayer, is then forced to flee with the river traveller Charlie Allnut on his steam launch the African Queen, who had been supplying their mail and supplies from a nearby town. What follows is then an extremely touching romance, and ultimately silly attempt to torpedo a German boat commanding a lake down the river and then escape to freedom. Ultimately, the trappings are unimportant, as it's all really about the unlikely love pairing of Bogie and Hepburn, two of the wildest legends to ever grace the big screen.

If you ever need to sell Bogart as an actor who could play more than gangsters, then you need to show 'The African Queen', and if you ever need to explain how an actress can remain vivid and alive despite the passage of time then again show this film. The rule also applies if you ever want to show someone how a simple film which never tries to do more than one thing at a time still manages to be compelling, and how a love story will always win out when given a chance by quality storytellers and performers. It also wins the Quirky Muffin award for not employing snakes on screen at any point in the proceedings, a great advantage for future rewatches, and presumably a hard temptation to resist in a film which features an awful lot of jungle.

In many ways it's difficult to write about 'The African Queen', as it's a tour-de-force for Bogart and Hepburn, both playing increasingly against type as the narrative progresses. It's even more impressive when you realise that Hepburn was almost constantly sick during the location work, as were most of the crew. Bogart escaped via whiskey, apparently, which I rather wish I didn't know. Strangely, there's not much music in the film, or at least there appears to not be, but it is there lurking fittingly and unobtrusively.

'The African Queen' was far better than I expected it to be, and in a reconfirmation of my bias, yet another example of Hepburn being The Woman on screen. There never will be an actress so vividly alive, wild, and full of classy fire in a film. She would have been a great Irene Adler in some never-made adaptation of 'A Scandal In Bohemia', but for which Sherlock?

O.