Word: queenly
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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FACING the question of what Huston was trying to do, rejecting melodrama, The African Queen can be seen as a weird-sort-of-pastoral. Allnut and Rose fall in love early in the film and spend most of it being sentimental and affectionate. Allnut shaves, his coarseness quite obliterated by romance, and Rose's up-tightness vanishes after the first clinch; the boat becomes a house in suburbia and Allnut views the tropical wilderness as a New England landscape, saying, "I'd like to come back 'ere some day." Increasingly, they address each other in blissful euphemisms: 'Dear, what...
...resorts to this lethargic montage in introducing enemy troops, the fort, all rapids, and the boat Louisa. The repetition of dramatic technique promotes an episodic quality that defeats a build-up of suspense or tension; there is no attempt to vary action and the middle third of The African Queen concentrates solely on rapids: a small rapid, a big rapid, and--out of the blue--a great big surprise rapid, spaced neatly at five minute intervals...
With all sense of obstacle removed, The African Queen evokes all the tension of a journey from Harvard Square to Park Street; only once does Huston create a moving conflict, when Allnut, effectively de-leeched, realizes he must go back into the leech-infested swamp in order to extricate the boat from the muddy canal...
...Huston simply fails to give either Bogart or Hepburn enough to do in The African Queen. The romance pastoral is established, but only at the expense of character development: Huston piles close-ups of Bogart and Hepburn on top of one another, all impeccably framed by Cardiff, all suggesting nothing more than bovine contentment. Ultimately, the comic timing of Huston and his actors save The African Queen from tedium: Hepburn's superb reactions to Bogart's gin-swilling equal Bogart's own anguish at watching her dispose of it, bottle by bottle. Lines in the printed script easily passed...
Huston's problem as a director has always been indecision. His laconic humor and bent for undisciplined improvisation invariably takes precedence over careful development of theme through characterization and narrative. In The African Queen, the pretentions of melodrama cancel-out the element of romance, providing only an irritating absence of clarity of purpose. Considering its creators, The African Queen represents a sad, if entertaining, meeting of people whose careers were moving downhill. Bogart and Hepburn had made by far their best films, she for Cukor and Bogart for Hawks; Huston's reputation as a director grew deservedly tarnished...