The USPS has issued a set of four stamps honoring great film
directors and the films for which they are most remembered. The four selected
are: John Ford (The Searchers), John Huston (The Maltese Falcon), Frank Capra
(It Happened One Night), and Billy Wilder (Some Like It Hot). We will be
exploring the lives and work of these directors over the next several weeks. In
this post LR Simon reviews The African Queen (1951).
The African Queen began production during turbulent times in
Hollywood—the studio system was beginning to break up and the House Un-American Activities Committee was driving talent out of the
United States. The film’s producer, Sam Spiegel, signed director John Huston
and stars Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn before he secured the money to
finance the production.
Hepburn’s and Bogart’s characters were a study in contrasts:
she played a prim, church-lady type (Rose) who represented “civilization,”
while he played a coarse, secular pragmatist who represented “nature.” When the
war reaches the isolated village where she was doing missionary work with her
brother (who is killed by invading Germans), she wants to join the fight out of
duty, while Charlie would rather ride the war out away from the fighting. Rose
has a plan to turn The African Queen into a torpedo boat in order to destroy a
German gunboat. (Bogart’s character, Charlie Allnut, was re-written to be
Canadian because he could not handle the Cockney accent of the character as
originally written in the source material. Bogart won his only Oscar for this
film.)
Because much of the film takes place on the boat, filming
presented technical challenges beyond tight quarters. Sets included several
pontoons with parts of the African Queen; another pontoon carried the Technicolor
equipment, and Hepburn’s contract called for her to have a private loo, which
was transported on another pontoon.
Huston had already established a preference for shooting on
location rather than sets, so The African Queen was shot mostly on location in
Uganda and the Congo. Sets were used for sequences that were considered too
dangerous, such as the rapid scenes.
While not a perfect film (changes to the ending to please
the studio strain credulity), The African Queen endures for the performances
and charm of its leads and the stunning cinematography.
References:
Embracing Chaos: Making The African Queen
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