THE
AFRICAN QUEEN
SUNDAY, 9TH MARCH, 10.00 A.M.
TUESDAY, 11TH MARCH, 8.30 P.M.
RUNNING TIME 105 MINUTES
RATED G
This is a BRAND NEW PRINT of the old classic.
Review from The Sydney Film Festival:
John Huston wryly maintained that his film projects were simply
a passport to enable his chosen life adventures and this artful
adaptation of CS Forester's novel (co-scripted with James Agee)
would attest to that. Gorgeously filmed in Technicolor by master
cinematographer Jack Cardiff on location along a 100-mile stretch
of the Belgian Congo, Huston roped in an impressive cast and
crew on this particular escapade and made a great film in the
process. The charming WW1 adventure-comedy charts the antics
of upright missionary Rose, and her intoxicating encounter
with Charlie, an alcoholic river trader. Katharine Hepburn,
the queen-of-wit, delivers a gorgeous performance as Rose,
and Humphrey Bogart received his sole Academy Award® for the
superb turn as Charlie, the comic drunk, a role deliciously
against type.
Review by Tim Dirks:
The African Queen (1951) is the uncomplicated tale
of two companions with mismatched, "opposites attract" personalities
who develop an implausible love affair as they travel together
downriver in Africa around the start of World War I. This quixotic
film by director John Huston, based on the 1935 novel of the
same name by C. S. Forester, is one of the classics of Hollywood
adventure filmmaking, with comedy and romance besides. It was
the first color film for the two leads and for director
Huston.
The acting of the two principal actors - Humphrey Bogart and
Katharine Hepburn - is some of the strongest ever registered
on film, although this was their first and only pairing together.
They portray an unshaven, drinking and smoking captain of a cranky
tramp steamer, and a prissy and proper, but imperious and unorthodox
WWI-era African missionary spinster. [This was 44 year-old Hepburn's
first screen appearance as a spinster, and marked her transition
to more mature roles for the rest of her career. At 52 years
of age, Bogart was also past his prime as a handsome, hard-boiled
detective.] John Mills, David Niven, and Bette Davis were, at
one time, considered for the lead roles.
During the course of
many hardships and quarrels along a course filled with tropical
dangers and 'evil' Germans in a warship, they develop a hard-earned
love and respect for each other. The real prize
and goal of their water journey down the Ulonga-Bora, other than
the destruction of a German boat, is to overcome the various
psychological obstacles that stand between them.
[There is a
remarkable resemblance between Disneyland's 'Jungle Cruise' attraction
and this film. A 1977 TV remake starred Warren Oates and Mariette
Hartley. In 1987, Hepburn wrote a pungent account of her experiences
during the shoot in her first book, The
Making of the African Queen, or How I Went to Africa with Bogart,
Bacall and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind. Actor-director
Clint Eastwood also chronicled the making of the film in White
Hunter, Black Heart (1990), basing it on Peter Viertel's
1953 account of his experiences making the film and working on
James Agee's script with John Huston.]
Directed on location (on
the Ruiki in the then Belgian Congo and the British protectorate
of Uganda) by John Huston (it was his ninth feature film and
fifth film with Bogart), the film was nominated for four Academy
Awards - Best Actress (Katharine Hepburn), Best Screenplay (James
Agee and John Huston), Best Director, and Best Actor (Humphrey
Bogart). Bogart was the only one
to win - the film's sole Oscar. In hindsight, Bogart's award
(his sole career Oscar) was probably consolation for
the oversight he experienced three years earlier when he wasn't
even nominated for one of his best roles as Fred C. Dobbs in
Huston's The
Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948).
Source: www.filmsite.org
to top
|
