The African Queen (1951)

Meet Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart). Charlie's a happy man. He's got it all figured out. Charlie owns a small steam launch called the African Queen. Charlie and the Queen make a living ferrying passengers, freight and mail up and down the Ulanga River in German East Africa. Charlie is living the good life...or so he thinks. Then World War I breaks out and everything changes. Suddenly, all of the non-German residents are enemies. When the Germans raid a mission run by the Reverend Samuel Sayer (Robert Morely) and his sister Rose (Katherine Hepburn), Charlie comes to evacuate them. Unfortunately, he's too late to save the reverend, who dies of fever. When Charlie tries to take Rose back up river to safety, she comes up with a counter plan. She wants to sail downstream to Lake Tanganyika and destroy the Louisa, a German gunboat that plies the waters of the lake. Charlie tries to point out the impossibility of the trip: there's a German fort to get past; there are rapids; there's a dense swamp. Rose is adamant, though. They must do this for England. Reluctantly, Charlie agrees, and they argue their way down river. When Charlie gets drunk soon after they start out, Rose dumps all of his alcohol overboard. By the time they've made it past the fort and shot the rapids, both Charlie and Rose have changed. They begin to see each other in a new light. Yes, they fall in love. And the harder their journey becomes, the deeper in love they fall. By the time they finally - and miraculously - reach the lake, they are a committed pair. Charlie fashions crude torpedoes out of dynamite and oxygen cylinders, and they head out onto Lake Tanganyika to sink the Louisa. Unfortunately, a storm sinks the African Queen instead. Picked up by the Louisa, Charlie and Rose beg the ships captain to marry them before they are executed as spies. As the doomed couple say "I do," the Louisa strikes the half submerged hulk of the African Queen, detonating the torpedoes. The Louisa sinks, and Charlie and Rose swim off to safety.

Well, that - in a nut shell - is the story. It doesn't sound like much when you read it that way. You have to experience it. The African Queen is simply one of the finest movies ever made. Based on the novel by E. M. Forester, and directed by John Huston, it is the only movie for which Humphrey Bogart won an academy award during his long career. It is also a movie that nearly killed everyone involved in the making of it. The movie was shot largely on location in Africa, and dysentery, malaria, contaminated water and wild animals were a constant danger. The only members of the cast and crew who didn't get sick were Bogart and Huston who lived on a diet of baked beans, canned asparagus and Scotch whiskey. Bogart famously said, "Whenever a fly bit Huston or me, it dropped dead." Katherine Hepburn was so sick with dysentery during the filming that a bucket had to be kept just off camera for her to throw up in between takes. Now that's dedication. And that dedication brought forth a movie worth watching again and again. Bogart's portrayal of the lazy, drunken Allnut is one of the finest of his career, and his Oscar was well deserved. Hepburn is fantastic as the straight-laced Rose Sayer, who can't help but fall in love with her surly, pickled companion. It's fun to watch the relationship between the two characters grow and blossom into a deep abiding love. And the scenery and cinematography are amazing as well. It's just hard to imagine what Huston and his crew had to do in order to film this movie. They had to build a raft in order to float all of the camera equipment to get shots inside of the Queen when it was out on the water.

All in all, The African Queen is just a great visual feast, as well as being a whole lot of fun to watch. The movie is rated G, and it's filmed in Technicolor (it was, in fact, Katherine Hepburn's first color movie). Runtime is 105 minutes, and it's worth every second.