Friday, 29 January 2021

ALL-TIME CLASSIC MOVIE FAVOURITES – THE AFRICAN QUEEN (1951)

 

The African Queen is based on C.S. Forester’s novel and directed by John Huston.

It’s set in German Eastern Africa at the beginning of WW1, and begins at a Christian Mission where Reverend Samuel Sayer (Robert Morley) has become a hostile foreigner, so German imperial troop’s burn down his mission.

He is beaten during the attack and later dies of fever, leaving his spinster sister Rose (Katharine Hepburn) all alone until Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart) the gin-swilling riverboat captain of the dilapidated river steamboat 'African Queen' arrives and gives her a means of escape.

They bury Samuel and set off on the long difficult journey down river without any comfort and along the way the odd companions conceive a cockeyed plan to help in the British War effort (and avenge her brother), by sinking a huge German warship, the Louisa, on Lake Victoria, by constructing their own torpedo.

The unlikely couple, an ex gin-swilling riverboat captain and a former strait-laced missionary, aim high in their endeavour, as God is obviously on their side, and they have love for each other.

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