Review of The African Queen (1952) by Adam S — 03 Apr 2010
One of the most famous of all films, if not just because of the two star performances by Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, but because of the myriad of stories about it's making, which is recounted on the new DVD in a wonderful 60-minute documentary.
Ostensibly, John Huston's adventure story, about two disparate people embarking on an impossible plan to blow up a German ship in the early days of WWI, is a romantic comedy road movie, with the road replaced by an African river, and the nominal vignettes with human characters replaced with everything from leaches and hippos to mosquitoes and crocodiles, making the triumphant ending all the more well earned.
Bogart and Hepburn have a nice chemistry that makes the switch from formal antagonism to instant romance somewhere in the middle totally plausible; Bogart famously won the Oscar over Brando, but Hepburn lost to Viven Leigh's Blanche DuBois, which sits fine with me, she'd still have three in the future to win.
This review of The African Queen (1952) was written by Adam S on 03 Apr 2010.
The African Queen has generally received very positive reviews.
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