Live Life Team
Genre: Action Adventure
Director: John Huston
Starring Cast: Humphrey Bogart, Katherine Hepburn, Robert Morley
At the beginning of World War One, Charlie Allnut (Bogart) makes his living ferrying supplies in his old steamer “The African Queen” to villages in East Africa. When the Reverend Samuel Sayer (Morley) dies, Charlie agrees to take Sayer’s sister Rose (Hepburn) back to civilisation, even though it will very likely mean confronting German forces.
Opposites attract when British missionary Rose Sayer and rough, gin drinking Canadian river trader Charlie Allnut are thrown together on the African Queen while evading the Germans. Under Hepburn’s moral influence, Bogart moves from focused selfishness to a sense of committed action, and ultimately ends up attacking a German gunboat – and almost inevitably love blooms between the rather unlikely duo.
John Huston was clear in his demand that the film be shot on location, relatively uncommon at the time, on the Ruiki River in the Congo. He felt it was the best way of ensuring the realism and truthfulness for the viewer following the couple’s dramas and burgeoning romance.
Excellently adapted from a CS Forester novel by Huston, The African Queen is a brazen story which combines improbable romance and wild adventure which is deeply enhanced by the clever interaction between two of Hollywood’s great actors of the time. The African Queen has Bogart and Hepburn both right at the top of their respective games, playing off each other perfectly. The end result is a cinema masterpiece.
