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The African Queen (John Huston, 1951)
I have this film memorized from the old days, but I'm happy to report that the DVD restoration is beautiful and has deleted all those nasty green lines and silhouettes which used to curse this film (yep, meaty, it looks 100% better than the version you watched earlier). The chemistry between Bogie and Kate Hepburn is wonderful, and their gradual romance and love for each other in the face of death is believable and humorous. Even with all these significant persons involved, The African Queen is an excellent example of an independent film. It was made completely-independently from the studio system, but what would you expect since Huston's previous studio flick (The Red Badge of Courage) was butchered. This "independence" may explain part of the reason why the movie seems so personal and why the film's finale seems to almost have been made up on the spur of the moment. Bogart won his only Oscar, quite an accomplishment in the face of Brando's Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, but the key to the film's popularity is how Hepburn can play her completely-opposite character (Huston told her to play her as Eleanor Roosevelt and the rest, as they say, is History) so wonderfully and yet still project such perfect love and understanding. Sure, there are some "fakish" scenes here and there, but they're far-outnumbered by realistic scenes where when Bogie throws the anchor in the river, you can see and hear all the REAL AFRICAN birds react and fly away. No BS CGI in this flick, just a few quaint models here and there. Check this one out if you've failed to do so thus far.
I have this film memorized from the old days, but I'm happy to report that the DVD restoration is beautiful and has deleted all those nasty green lines and silhouettes which used to curse this film (yep, meaty, it looks 100% better than the version you watched earlier). The chemistry between Bogie and Kate Hepburn is wonderful, and their gradual romance and love for each other in the face of death is believable and humorous. Even with all these significant persons involved, The African Queen is an excellent example of an independent film. It was made completely-independently from the studio system, but what would you expect since Huston's previous studio flick (The Red Badge of Courage) was butchered. This "independence" may explain part of the reason why the movie seems so personal and why the film's finale seems to almost have been made up on the spur of the moment. Bogart won his only Oscar, quite an accomplishment in the face of Brando's Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire, but the key to the film's popularity is how Hepburn can play her completely-opposite character (Huston told her to play her as Eleanor Roosevelt and the rest, as they say, is History) so wonderfully and yet still project such perfect love and understanding. Sure, there are some "fakish" scenes here and there, but they're far-outnumbered by realistic scenes where when Bogie throws the anchor in the river, you can see and hear all the REAL AFRICAN birds react and fly away. No BS CGI in this flick, just a few quaint models here and there. Check this one out if you've failed to do so thus far.