#65 The African Queen (1951)

Plot summary (with spoilers): It's 1914 and we're in Africa. Katharine Hepburn and her fat, bland, brother are in a tiny church, singing a hymnal of some sort.  They are missionaries, like you hear about in movies. Katharine on the piano, and her brother behind the pulpit. The entire congregation are African tribesmen and women, in full tribal apparel.  The hymn is in English, and only Katharine and her brother are singing, while the rest of the tribesmen just mumble incoherently. Sigh. It's about to get totally racist up in here, isn't it? 

Anyway, Humphrey Bogart shows up in a rickety old wooden boat that's about fifteen long or so, called The African Queen. His name is Charlie.  Katharine's name is Rose.  Her brother's name is irrelevant. 

Charlie delivers mail to Rose and her brother, then has a bit of tea and crumpets with them, because she's supposed to be English, then Charlie says he probably won't see them next month on account of the war.  They're stunned.  What war?  Oh, Germany is fighting with France and Russia and a bunch of those little countries are involved, I don't really know all the details, miss. Then he goes. Immediately afterwards, German soldiers show up and invade the village, and bash Rose's irrelevant, fat, bland brother in the head. Then they burn down the village.  Sometime later, Rose tends to her bruised, irrelevant, fat, bland brother but he gets a fever and dies.  Then Charlie shows back up.  He says he'll try to take her to safety on his boat. She goes with him, but right away he tells her that the Germans have every river blocked off and they'll just have to wait here on this boat until the war is over.  Rose thinks that's fucking stupid, and insists that they...do something to make the boat a torpedo?  She convinces Charlie to make the actual boat a torpedo and then they can ram a German boat called the Louisa that is blocking the river access and then get to freedom.  Or something. Charlie lays down some truly impressive Star Trek techno babble about how they can reconstitute  the warp core and something something 1.21 jigowatts and make a torpedo. He doesn't want to do it though, would prefer to sit around on the boat for the next several years, drinking his literal crates of gin.  

So they're sailing, and she's bitchy and frigid, and he's carousing and alcoholic, but also shockingly deferential to her every whim, which doesn't really fit the 1950's "man" stereotype, but okay.  They bathe in the river, and she unswaddles her twenty seven layers of clothing, while still bathing in something most women today would call formal wear. Then one night it rains, and she sleeps under the tarp in dryness and when he tries to join her, she gets all "Well, I never! My vapors!" and forces him back out into the rain. Then she feels guilty for acting like the biggest bitch alive, and graciously allows him to sleep under the tarp on his own boat. 

Then he gets super drunk and admits their mission is a suicide one and doomed to failure, so she dumps out all his gin and gives him the silent treatment and says he's not a real man and blah blah until he agrees to do it again. She would've been croc food about a week ago, were this my boat, I'll tell you what. 

Then, some Germans on the shore see them sailing by, and start shooting at them.  They duck, and then float into a waterfall and get all wet and almost crash, and then once they're safe, start making out.  Fade out.  What happens during the fade out?  Well, that's between Rose, Charlie, Rose's God, and The Hays Code. 

So now at least Rose isn't acting like a one-note bitch anymore. They try to row ashore at one point, but a bunch of bugs try to eat them alive.  Then they get stuck in the mud.  Then Charlie gets a leech and has to take off his shirt, and boy it must of been much easier to be a man in the 1950's, when even a sex symbol movie star like Humphrey Bogart could get away with looking like a more leathery version of Paul Giamatti, with chest hair sprouting randomly like weeds. Then Charlie gets the flu.  Then Rose prays for God to help them out of the mud.  Then God does His part and makes it rain and the boat lifts.  Then they discover the Louisa and attempt to row over there.  Then someone comments on my Facebook status, and then I make a pithy and hilarious rejoinder. Then I look up and their boat has sunk and Charlie gets captured by the Germans and he thinks Rose has drowned, because he's unfamiliar with how movies work. The Germans fortunately are the kind who speak English with German accents, so they interrogate Charlie who admits everything because he doesn't care, and then Rose shows up, they've captured her too, and the German captain says they're both to be hung immediately.  Now we're getting somewhere! 

As the ropes are prepared, we cut back to...The African Queen, having resurfaced upside down, the torpedo still attached.  Hmm.  Just how stupid is the movie going to be?  Let's find out!  

They're about to get hung, and Charlie asks the captain for one last request. He wants the captain to marry them.  The captain...agrees.  Okay.  He does the whole spiel, do you take this woman, do you take this man, and we cut back to the overturned Queen about twenty times in case you didn't GET IT, then the captain says the only hilarious/awesome line in the whole movie.  Said quickly in one breath, "then by the power invested in me I now pronounce you man and wife you may kiss the bride prepare the ropes".  One star, right there.  The nooses get slipped around their necks, but of course, the Louisa runs into the overturned African Queen, and blows up.  Rose and Charlie jump into the water and escape while the others are distracted.  They swim away, laughing at their good fortune, calling each other Mr. and Mrs. Whatever Charlie's Last Name Was, and then they...swim somewhere safe, I guess?  Unclear. 

The important thing is, because that Nazi guy mumbled a few words right before he was about to kill them, it is now morally okay for them to fuck.  YAAAAYYYYYYY!!!!!!

Review: Well...points for the original setting, I guess.  Because of that, it took me about half and hour before I realized I was watching a standard boilerplate rom com. I have to say, I'm mostly stunned about Humphrey Bogart's character. Once the Apatow brand of movies got popular, there was a backlash and a lot of hand wringing about the Apatow Alpha Male prototype, the idea that loser schulbs like Rogen and Cera and Hill were the heroes, so unlike the Eastwoods and Bogarts of yesterday. But Bogart's character here is very similar to Rogen's in Knocked Up, and he could easily fit into the Apatow universe. He's an immature manchild who kowtows to beautiful women, and drinks too much and doesn't care about current events, and will basically never amount to anything until the inevitable third act redemption.  And Hepburn plays the Apatow-approved Heigel character, a bitch and a shrew until she's softened by the love of a good man. I confess I don't yet know my movie history enough to know whether Bogart and Hepburn were inventing this cliche, or just perpetuating it.  Either way, there's nothing new under the sun, I guess.  And for that little bit of education, I'm glad I saw this shitty movie. 

I also give the movie HUGE credit for not being horribly racist, as I feared they would be in the first scene. True, the Africans are sidelined almost immediately, but I never got the since their clothes or way of speaking was meant to me mocked or belittled in any way. But anyway, moving on.  I'll see you next time in The Philadelphia Story, Ms. Hepburn.  Don't disappoint me again. 

Stars: Two out of five. 

Next, the prescient "Network", which should be required viewing for everyone at Fox, and then "Cabaret".