Hatari (1962)

I think I was five years old when I first saw Howard Hawks' Hatari!. It was seared into my brain. Can't help it. That's what happens when you view things during your "formative years." They become a part of the pattern of your life, part of the lens through which you see the entire world for the rest of your life. There's a fancy epistemological term for that, but I can't recall what it is right now, and you probably don't care anyway. But it's tough to be a fan of this movie, because it's so un-PC today. After all, you got a bunch of white men charging around Africa capturing animals and shipping them back to zoos in Europe and America. That rankles a lot of peoples' knickers. I can't tell you how many scathing reviews I've read of Hatari!, one of which used the words "disgusting" and "gross" so many times that I simply stopped counting after a while. And you know what? They were right. It is disgusting to see these people capturing these animals, almost - but not quite - as disgusting as if they'd been shooting them. And then there are those 1950's attitudes toward women, who were all meant to be brainless little housewives. And of course, there is the overriding spectre of colonialization. What are all these white folks doing there anyway? They own the place, that's what. Why do they own it? Because they took it away form it's previous owners. How did they do that? They had bigger guns, duh!

But none of this makes me hate this movie. I still love it. It still retains the same fascination it held for me as a small boy. Because, once you get through all of the that stuff I just mentioned above (not an easy task, I realize) Hatari! is a funny, romantic adventure film. The plot is rather loose. Sean Mercer (John Wayne) and an international group of adventurers spend their days running around the African bush capturing wild animals and selling them to zoos and circuses in Europe and America. At the start of the film, the Indian (Bruce Cabot - the man who rescued Fay Wray from King Kong) is gored by a rhino. At the hospital, a young man named Chips (Gerard Blaine) gives the Indian a blood transfusion and is later hired to replace the Indian while he recovers. Then a female photographer, Anna Maria "Dallas" d'Allasandro (Elsa Martinelli), shows up to photograph the animal captures for the zoo that's buying them. What follows is lots of high-speed chases across the Savannah, evenings spent socializing around the campfire or back at the ranch house, a couple of romances, three baby elephants and a rocket. More than that I won't say; you'll just have to see for yourself.

Hatari! was shot largely on location in: Arusha National Park in what was then Tanganyika (now Tanzania); on Ngongongare Farm, a hunting ranch owned by Hardy Kruger who plays Kurt Muller in the film; and in Nairobi, Kenya. Hawks didn't have a completed script when he began shooting, and it shows. There's not much of a coherent story line. There's the photographer whose there to document the captures; there's the push to collect all of the animals on their shopping list; there's the fear of catching rhinos; and there are a couple of love stories. But all of it just seems loosely joined together. Still it all fits given the setting, which is breathtaking to say the least. One interesting side note is that all of the scenes of the group chasing and capturing the animals were filmed using the real actors. No animal handlers were substitute. When the rhino escaped from them, it was real, and the actors had to recapture the rhino. Hawks felt it would be more realistic that way. Another piece of trivia is that all of the capture scenes had to be dubbed over, because John Wayne kept swearing. I'll just bet he did. All of this goes together, though, to make one fun movie. If you can drop your early 21st century proprieties for a while, you might find that you actually enjoy it.

Hatari! is rated G and is filmed in Technicolor.