The African Queen is a classic comedy/romance/adventure movie starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn. There are other people in the movie, but not many.
In 1914, Europe is fucking around in Africa, giving us things like "German East Africa", and of course there are also missionaries. Rose Sayer (Hepburn) and her brother Samuel (Robert Morley) are two of such, and they make the mistake of staying in the area when the Great War heats up. The Germans roll in, burn the village they've built, conscript the native folks and leave Rose and Samuel for dead. Samuel obliges, but Rose hooks up with local messenger and miner and jack-of-all-trades Charlie Allnut (Bogart) to get the hell out of the area.
And then they hatch this ridiculous plan (rather, she hatches it, he goes along with it) to take his little boat, the titular African Queen, down the river to a huge lake where a German gunboat is preventing the British from invading. They figure they'll rig the Queen with explosives and sink the ship. This is of course absurd on a number of levels, but they manage to get past the first set of rapids by the skin of their teeth, whereupon Rose becomes entirely aroused at the thrill of it all and the two of them slowly fall in love.
They do get to the lake (facing multiple mechanical issues, nearly getting devoured by bugs, and running aground in the reeds until a monsoon saves them)...whereupon their ship sinks in a storm and they're captured and sentenced to be hanged.
But then, deus ex lakeina! The ship hits the floating Queen and sinks, and Charlie and Rose start swimming off to the shore together. One hopes they get there without getting eaten by crocs or murdered by hippos, but it's a happy ending either way.
The story behind the making of The African Queen is at least as nuts as the movie itself, but what I enjoy about it is that no one in the business side of things really expected it to do well and then it blew the goddamn doors off and won Bogie his only career Oscar. Much of it was filmed on location in Uganda and (what was at the time) Belgian Congo (fucking white people), and that definitely comes across in the performances. But the other thing that I think really made it is that neither Hepburn nor Bogie were young, pretty people (I mean, Katherine Hepburn is never not beautiful, but you see what I mean). They were people with some miles on them, and that makes their tenacity and competence believable and their relationship more grown up and sweet.
The movie changes the ending from the novel; in the novel, the Queen sinks, the German gunship gets blown up by a British ship, and the vibe is very much "well, we tried, but what the hell were we thinking?" I don't know if that would have been a satisfying ending to the movie. I suspect it would have been too much of a fizzle, and I know it would have been out of tone with the comedic air of the rest of it. I do think that the ending as shown is a little too pat, even cartoonish, and it's telegraphed so much that we never really feel that the leads are in any danger of being hanged (but I dunno, maybe in 1951 it wouldn't have played that way).
Overall, the movie is fun, features really impressive performances from the leads, and it's freaking beautiful (which is good, because they lugged those Technicolor cameras all the way to Africa).
My Grade: A
Rewatch Value: Medium
Next up: Django Unchained
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