1951 adventure/romance, dir. John Huston, Humphrey Bogart, Katherine
Hepburn: IMDb. After the
African mission is destroyed, the survivor is determined to strike
back at the Hun.
I haven't read Forester's 1935 book from which this was adapted.
But I have read most of Hornblower and I think I have some idea of
Forester's style now.
Even the location is somewhat obsolete, and would have been at the
time this was made; "German East Africa" (1885-1918) is the same
territory as modern Burundi, Rwanda, mainland Tanzania and a little
bit of Mozambique. (After the war it was split up between Britain and
Belgium, with that little bit going to Portugal.) But we're not in a
"real" location anyway, which makes life easier in terms of arranging
the geography.
Bogart feels to me much like the weak man he played in The Treasure of
the Sierra Madre_ (1948), We don't really know how he got to where he
is, but it's clear that he has gradually fallen down there and has no
ambitions to get out again. This is reinforced by a lovely bit of
acting near the start, when the missionaries give him tea (in the
English style) and he's clearly made thoroughly uncomfortable by the
whole business.
But there are things which aren't obvious to a modern viewer.
Three-strip Technicolor cameras were big heavy things, and using them
on location was, well, not completely unheard-of but very rare. Nature
footage in these days before Life on Earth was still a rare thing,
and a draw, and at this quality was amazing. (They were still making
Tarzan films; Johnny Weissmuller had only recently retired from the
part.)
Meanwhile it's always good to see Robert Morley, particularly here
fairly early in his career when he wasn't as typecast. Of course
Methodists do not have bishops. (Anglicans, as in the book, do.)
But anyway, attack, death, escape, and the suicidal plan. And it's
jolly good, but it is in Forester's style of going incident by
incident (especially the Technical Bit with the shaft and propeller
repair) with very little sense of progression between them. (And where
Forester could hint at their sleeping together, the Production Code
made that impossible in the film.) That's where the film loses me,
really, when it pulls away from our leads smouldering at each other
and tries to get more serious.
But my goodness it is so welcome to see an actual boat going down
actual rapids, not a model or a bit of CGI, even if we have to have
back-projection when we see our heroes inside her.
And here's the scene Verbinski stole for the rum bonfire in Pirates
of the Caribbean (2003). (But a sudden cessation of heavy drinking
like that is the way to bring on delerium tremens.)
I am a little surprised that a fort commanding a river doesn't seem to
have any artillery, rather than just riflemen. Of course the artillery
would have to have been brought there.
The historical inspiration for the Königin Luise was Graf [von]
Götzen, shipped overland in pieces to Kigoma on Lake Tanganyika and
reassembled there (to serve as a ferry). Once war broke out, her naval
crew and guns were brought in the same way. Not that a 4" and a 3" are
very much as naval guns go, but when nobody else has anything more
than a rifle…
And this is where the plot diverges completely from the book. There,
the Queen still sinks during the attack and our heroes are captured,
but the German captain feels that executing them would be uncivilised,
so he hands them over to the British commander (who then goes out to
sink Luise with no involvement from the principals). No trying to
save each other, no last-moment marriage, no escape. Of course
Forester was writing in an era when the Germans were seen as basically
the good guys, useful allies in the struggle against world communism,
and the war more of a mistake than anything else.
Louisa's Second Officer (on the right in the interrogation, then
later standing) may look a little familiar; he's Walter Gotell, who
would go on to play General Gogol in several James Bond films.
I talk about this film further on
Ribbon of Memes.