The African Queen (film)

The American Film Institute ranked the movie The African Queen among the 100 Best Movies, the 100 Best Love Stories, and the 100 Most Inspiring Movies of all time.

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In 1951 stars Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn had supposedly lost their box-office magic. Although they were still being offered roles, the general belief among Hollywood executives was that they could no longer fill theaters. Then John Huston directed them in The African Queen. The movie was hugely successful with critics and audiences alike.

Huston had made four previous movies with Humphrey Bogart, and Huston wanted his friend to play the role of Charlie Allnut, a gin-swilling operator of a dilapidated boat on Africa’s Congo River—the movie’s title is the name of Allnut’s launch. But neither Huston nor the actor had ever worked with Hepburn, and they had some misgivings about casting her. However, she had won a Best Actress Oscar in 1934 and had been nominated three other times, and she believed the role of the missionary Rose was a perfect fit for her. Hepburn convinced Huston and Bogart that she was the right player for the part, and one of the all-time great love stories on film was the result. To Hepburn’s delight and Bogart’s dismay, the movie was almost entirely filmed on location in central Africa, and the making of the movie is almost as legendary as the film itself.

Plot

The African Queen is set in 1914. It opens with British missionaries, the Reverend Samuel Sayer and his unmarried sister Rose, leading African villagers in prayer. The parishioners race away when they hear Charlie Allnut chugging into town on his boat African Queen. The Sayers eat lunch with the dirty, uncouth Charlie, who tells them war has begun in Europe.

The Sayers are determined to stay where they are, but soon after Charlie leaves, German soldiers arrive. They burn down the village, and the shock of the event causes Samuel to collapse mentally and physically.

When Charlie returns the next day, Samuel is dead. Charlie helps Rose bury her brother and offers her shelter on his boat. As they make their way down the river, Charlie notes that an armed German steamer is blocking British troops at Lake Tanganyika. Rose immediately wants to attack. Her plan is to devise explosive torpedoes and ram the African Queen into the German ship.

Charlie hates the idea. The Germans have a well-defended fort on the route, and dangerous rapids must be traversed. However, Rose shames him into making the attempt. As they sail toward Lake Tanganyika, Charlie instructs Rose in the tricks of sailing the African river, and she makes a plan for how they each can bathe privately. The rising sexual tension is reinforced that night when in a heavy downpour he tries join her under a tarp. She initially refuses but finally relents, and he sleeps near her. The next day, when they face dangerous rapids, Charlie hopes that the experience will frighten Rose, but it has the opposite effect. She is physically exhilarated, again reinforcing the idea of her romantic awakening.

Charlie turns to his stash of gin. Drunk, he asserts that he will sail no farther and calls Rose a "skinny old maid." The next morning he discovers Rose emptying his gin bottles into the river. Later, he begs her to talk with him, thinking she is upset by his drinking. But it is his refusal to sail on that has enraged her. He argues but backs down in the end.

They continue on their mission, first passing the fort. German soldiers fire on them, damaging the boat’s engine. Charlie manages to repair it, but they hit another set of rapids. Rose has to steer while Charlie struggles to keep the engine stoked. Thrilled with relief when they survive the rapids, they fall into one another’s arms, and the embrace turns romantic. Their love grows as they face additional hardships.

They finally discover their target on the lake. However, new misadventures ultimately lead to their separation in the night and Charlie’s capture by German troops. Believing Rose has died, Charlie accepts his death sentence—and then Rose is brought in. When she learns that Charlie is to be hanged, she confesses to the whole plot and is also sentenced to hang. Charlie asks the captain of the German ship to marry them first. Just as the ceremony ends, the capsized African Queen resurfaces, runs into the German ship, and explodes, sinking the enemy. Together in the water, Charlie and Rose see the African Queen nameplate floating. Their daring plan a success, the newlyweds swim for shore.

Significance

The African Queen was heavily praised at the time of its release and received nominations for four Academy Awards. Humphrey Bogart won his only Oscar for his portrayal of Charlie Allnut. In 1994 The African Queen was added to the Library of Congress National Film Registry. As noted at the outset it has been honored by the American Film Institute in three different lists. It is seventeenth among the AFI’s "100 Greatest Movies," fourteenth on its "100 Greatest Love Stories" list, and forty-eighth on its "Most Inspiring Movies" list.

Although The African Queen was the top-earning movie of 1951, its legacy is driven by factors other than its critical and financial success. One was the simple fact that most of the film was shot on location in central Africa, which was very rare in 1951. It was shot in Technicolor, which required heavy, unwieldy cameras. Making the movie in a remote location was a bold and risky decision.

Another was the extraordinary chemistry between the two stars. Bogart and Hepburn make every scene, every nuance of the growing romance between two completely dissimilar characters utterly believable.

And a third is the almost legendary process of making the movie itself. This has inspired books and a movie, White Hunter, Black Heart, about John Huston’s behavior on location and his unrequited quest to shoot an elephant while there.

Awards and nominations

Won

Nominated

Bibliography

Agee, James, John Huston, and Peter Viertel. The African Queen. N.p.: Amazon/University Reprints, 2012. Print.

Hepburn, Katharine. The Making of TheAfrican Queen, or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall and Huston, and Almost Lost My Mind. New York: Knopf/Random House, 1987. Print.

Munden, Kenneth, ed. The American Film Institute Catalogue of Motion Pictures Produced in the United States. New York: Bowker, 2015. Print.

Roberts, Jerry. The Complete History of American Film Criticism. Santa Monica: Santa Monica, 2010. Print.

Stevens, George, Jr., ed. Conversations with the Great Moviemakers of Hollywood’s Golden Age at the American Film Institute. New York: Knopf, 2006. Print.

Tasker,Yvonne. The Hollywood Action and Adventure Film. Hoboken: Wiley-Blackwell, 2015. Print.