Mar. 24, 2010 - Issue #753: Zion I
DVD Detective
THE AFRICAN QUEEN (full review)
Hail to the queen
The story goes that the location shoot for The African Queen was something of a disaster. Director John Ford would repeatedly take off to go hunting, the African crew was suspect at best, and almost the entire cast and crew came down with dysentery from drinking the water. Supposedly the only people who avoided the disease were Ford and Humphrey Bogart. Their secret? They only drank whisky. (In a pretty hilarious twist, co-star Katherine Hepburn only drank water in protest of their boozing, for which she was rewarded with dysentery so heinous she had to keep a hidden vomit bucket beside her for some scenes.)I'm not sure if that's actually true—I'll defer to another legendary Hollywood director, John Ford, on printing the legend—but it would at least partially explain some of Bogart's sloppy charm as Charlie Allnut, the affable but insouciant captain of the titular river boat. This was the role that won Bogart his only Oscar, and it's a textbook case of playing against type: his normal economic stoicism and wry cynicism are mostly kept at bay here, replaced by an utterly disarming affability. Allnut blurts out "Miss" when addressing Hepburn's Christian missinoary Rose Sayer so often it almost sounds like a stutter, and the rare times we do see him try to stand up for himself, it looks like he's getting a knife in the shoulder, or at least develoves into a kind of desperate, almost-pathetic pleading. Allnut is basically a meekly selfish and simple guy—at least before Hepburn's strict missionary starts to work on him—Rick Blaine's melancholy and Sam Spade's piercing intellect buried under scruff and familiar manners.
He is thrown together with Rose after the Germans raze the village where she's spreading the word of God, some distant consequence of the First World War breaking out in Europe. One of the unexpected treats in this film—finally out on DVD—actually, is the cynicism with which it approaches Rose's civilizing task, at least as it pertains to the Africans: a scene with Rose and her reverend brother singing hymns is nearly drown out by the bored, slack-jawed humming of most of the congregation, while the affable Charlie gets along just by keeping his head down and letting them go about their business. It's equally wry about religion: not one minute after Rose's brother is assuring her that they just need to keep faith in God, the Germans arrive and start burning huts to the ground.
In any event, with the villagers fled and the strain too much for her brother, who slips into dementia and dies, Rose has little choice but to hop on board with Charlie, who intends on waiting out the war hidden on the jungle-enclosed river. Naturally, she has other plans. Set on doing her part for the war effort, she convinces Charlie—more like politely demands, refusing to listen to his reasonable concerns—to take the boat down the highly dangerous river and use it to sink a German warship that might be blocking the British navy's path. From here it is a fairly classic tale of an odd couple growing to appreciate one another.
Chief among its strengths, though, is that most of the film is nothing but Bogart and Hepburn. Truthfully, I can find the latter sometimes a bit hard to take: her talent is undeniable, of course, but her finishing-school poise and aristocratic aloofness sometimes feel a bit too put-on, like someone more running from her working-class roots than rising above them. That's not an issue here: Hepburn's practiced diction and rigid posture are perfect for the role of a good Christian, and some of the film's best moments come from her being an unflappable rod. The morning after Charlie goes on a bit of a drunk, the imperiousness with which she pours out the remaining gin is both comic and fierce, but better still is her stoney gaze while Charlie tries to make amends: Bogart flops around with the desperate clinginess of a puppy, while Hepburn just sits there, her eyes practically burning a hole through the Bible she purports to be reading.
Still, for the charm of this slow courting, the scenes after the inevitable love connection are probably their best work. Their individual traits start to infect each other, and the effortlessness of their romance starts to make their suicide run seem more like a pleasure cruise: a goofy scene has Bogart impersonating hippos—again, something that would seem to be even more fun while sauced—and both are hefty enough actors to make the inevitable tension rise above what's frequently airy romantic comedy. V
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