As I wrote in some of my earlier reviews, I encounter a somewhat embarrassing phenomenon when watching cinema classics. There are films that are universally lauded and cherished as great achievements of the seventh art. These are movies I’m supposed to like and appreciate. But more often than I’d care to admit, I find that some of those films don’t meet my expectations, made sky‑high through decades‑long hype. These films, naturally, have some qualities, but those qualities are not enough to justify their cult status.
One such example is The African Queen, the 1951 romantic adventure by John Huston. The plot of the film, based on the novel by C.S. Forester, is set in German East Africa in September 1914. In a remote jungle village of Kundi, Reverend Samuel Sayer (played by Robert Morley) and his spinster sister Rose (played by Katharine Hepburn) are running a Methodist mission. The only link to civilisation comes in the form of the “African Queen”, a small river steamer that occasionally brings supplies and mail. Its owner and captain is Charlie Allnut (played by Humphrey Bogart), a rough Canadian who warns the Sayers about the war that has erupted in Europe. Soon after his departure, German troops enter the village, burn houses and capture inhabitants for forced recruitment and slave labour. Sayer is so devastated by the shock that he suffers a nervous breakdown and dies a few days later.
When Allnut revisits the now‑ruined mission, he finds Rose alone. He volunteers to bring her to safety. He wants to wait for the end of the war in his jungle hideout, but Rose has different plans. She not only wants to reach British‑controlled territory, but also conceives the mad idea of using Allnut’s supplies of explosive to sink a large German gunboat standing in their way. Allnut reluctantly agrees, and this is the beginning of a long and perilous journey.
The African Queen has constantly been hailed as a masterpiece, and is often referenced as the film that finally brought a well‑deserved Oscar to Humphrey Bogart. But this film is a disappointment nevertheless—hardly the zenith of the careers of Bogart and Huston.
Of course, there are some good elements, mostly in the script written by Huston and John Agee. The script uses the good old motif of “opposites attract”, putting two totally different characters in unusual circumstances and gradually showing the evolution of their relationship, as well as the evolution of the characters themselves. We watch these characters—an uptight, stiff‑upper‑lip British spinster and a rough, insensitive Canadian riverboat captain—discovering not only that they have more in common than they had admitted, but also a romantic attraction towards each other. Both actors portraying the protagonists—Bogart and Hepburn—were past their prime when they made this film, but they gave superb performances nevertheless, often using humour to make their on‑screen chemistry more believable.
Unfortunately, when the film isn’t dealing with Allnut and Rose, it becomes rather disappointing. The journey itself is interesting, with many realistic problems and even more realistic solutions. But the realism of the film is severely undermined by melodramatic scenes in the latter part, followed by an even more melodramatic, unbelievable deus ex machina ending. This is made worse by extremely dated special effects that fail to connect footage shot on location in (then) Belgian Congo and British Uganda with characters obviously shot in London studios. Some viewers sensitive to “political correctness” would frown upon the not‑so‑favourable, even racist, treatment of natives in this film.
The biggest problem I have with this film, however, is its lack of historical accuracy. The film suggests that Germans in East Africa at the start of WW1 had the upper hand, as well as the intention and resources to conquer the whole continent, using the same brutal force and employing the same methods as the Nazis would use in WW2. Nothing could be further from the truth. German colonies were scattered and isolated from the mother country, manned by small garrisons and generally destined to be easily taken over by superior forces stationed in bordering Entente colonies. This happened with each of Germany’s overseas territories, with the exception of German East Africa. The local commander, General Paul von Lettow‑Vorbeck, put up stiff resistance to the Entente and lasted until the capitulation of the mother country in 1918, mostly using hit‑and‑run strategy. That earned him a reputation as one of the most successful guerrilla commanders in history, and that success is impossible to explain without at least some support from local natives. German forces in East Africa may have been as savage as depicted in this film, but such savagery was probably common to their Entente counterparts; native Africans had no reason to favour one colonial master over another. The African Queen, one of the rare films that actually deals with this exotic theatre of WW1, fails to take that into account—a flaw that would be corrected only a quarter of a century later by Jean‑Jacques Annaud in his Black and White in Colour.
Historical inaccuracies, bad special effects and script flaws aside, The African Queen is still an entertaining film worth watching. That is mostly thanks to the excellent performances of Bogart and Hepburn; the two of them make us forget that the same story was later told in much better, yet less celebrated films.
RATING: 7/10 (+++)
(Note: The text in its original form was posted in Usenet newsgroup rec.arts.movies.reviews on December 21st 1999)
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Movie URL: https://www.themoviedb.org/movie/488-the-african-queen Critic: AA
