AFRICAN QUEEN, THE - DVD review

I can't think of a more esteemed movie that has not yet made it to DVD in the United States. People loved "The African Queen," with Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn, when John Huston made it in 1951, and, I daresay, people love it just as much today. Yet for complications I do not understand, as of this writing, no U.S. studio has yet issued it on disc. (It was originally a Romulus-Horizon production, which Fox released on VHS tape some years ago, and to which I understand Paramount now owns the U.S. DVD rights.) The version reviewed here is a region-free Korean import from Cine Korea, available on-line from various sources including Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble.

"The African Queen" is an adventure, a romance, and a comedy, yet it tackles none of these genres according to accepted movie custom. The adventure takes place in German-controlled central-east Africa in 1914, at the outset the First World War, with the main characters--a Canadian man and an English woman--trying desperately to escape the Germans. They sail down the Ulonga-Bora River toward a lake in the man's dilapidated, rattrap little steamboat named the "African Queen." Once at the lake, the pair intend to blow up a German gunboat, using the "Queen" as the ramming device for a pair of homemade torpedoes.

The romance and the comedy take place aboard the "Queen" between a middle-aged, drunken sot, Charlie Allnut (Bogart), and a middle-aged lady, prim and straight-laced, Rose Sayer (Hepburn). A more nontraditional adventure story and a more unconventional romantic comedy you couldn't imagine.

Allnut travels up and down the East-African rivers delivering supplies to the colonists and missionaries there, but mostly he drinks. He's unshaven, unkempt, and usually less than sober, hardly one's image of a movie hero. Like many of Bogart's roles, it was a gamble. By 1951 Bogart was one of the biggest stars in the world, enabling him to take a chance in 1948 playing a thorough reprobate in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre" and getting away with it to public and critical approval; and, yes, he got it away with it again in "The African Queen." Although, to be fair, his character here is nothing like the greedy, dishonest scoundrel he played in "Sierra Madre."

Hepburn, well into her forties by this time and at an age when Hollywood usually abandons such actresses, took a chance, too, playing the prudish, almost Puritanical spinster who eventually falls for the grubby, grizzled, thoroughly egregious Allnut. The two players perform fabulously well against type, each bringing out the best in the other, both as actors and as characters in the story. Before long, it's hard to tell the difference.

This was the fourth of five movies Huston would make with Bogart and his only one with Hepburn. Huston co-wrote the screenplay with James Agee and Peter Viertel from a novel by C.S. Forester, turning the story into a tight, productive motion picture that is remarkably concise and pointed. There isn't a wasted moment, a wasted gesture, or a wasted line. The plot, the characters, and the action move along efficiently, with the odd-couple relationship of Bogart and Hepburn keeping the boat and the movie afloat. For his part, Bogart won an Oscar for Best Actor, and the Academy nominated Hepburn, Huston, and Agee for Best Actress, Best Director, and Best Writing respectively. Look also in the cast for Robert Morley as Miss Sayer's brother, a Christian missionary, and Theodore Bikel (who at this time is still going strong on stage and screen) as the first officer aboard the German ship.

To make the movie more realistic, Huston took his cast and crew to the Congo, Uganda, and Zaire, as well as to England, Turkey, and Southern California for filming. The location shooting became the stuff of legend, and Clint Eastwood chronicled some of it in "White Hunter Black Heart" (1990).

My parents took me to see "The African Queen" when I was a kid, and two things always stuck out in my memory: the fort on the hill (really neat) and the leeches (really icky). Almost a quarter of a century later, Katharine Hepburn would team up with John Wayne in "Rooster Cogburn," a movie that used virtually the same formula but to much duller effect.

Trivia: According to John Eastman in his book "Retakes" (Ballantine, New York, 1989), "Columbia Studios bought the original C.S. Forester novel for Charles Laughton and Elsa Lanchester, then, in 1939, sold it to Warner Bros. for Bette Davis and David Niven. When Davis fell out with the producer, 20th Century-Fox bought the property, and John Huston unearthed it there twelve years later. Plagued by army ants, black wasps, dysentery, and steaming jungle heat, cast and crew suffered miserably in the African location scenes. Only Huston and Bogart escaped sickness (owing, they maintained, to their daily Scotch intake.) The actual 'African Queen,' a retired riverboat, towed four rafts down the Ruiki. On one, a mock-up replica of the boat provided a stage set, while others held equipment and private quarters for Hepburn. Bogart, at first lukewarm about his role and hating any sort of location work, gradually absorbed himself in the character of Charlie Allnut, but he never ceased complaining about the jungle discomforts and Hepburn's incessant, bewildering cheerfulness.... Screenwriter James Agee, whose disabling heart attack put an end to this work on the script, intended the river journey to symbolize the act of love, and he strongly criticized the upbeat finale concocted by Huston and writer Peter Viertel."

Video:
I gave up waiting for an American studio to release "The African Queen" on DVD and ordered what was advertised on Amazon.com as a region-free Hong Kong import from Castaways. What came was a region-free import from Cine Korea, a company of which I knew nothing. Suspicious, I looked up Cine Korea on Google and found their Web site, where they seem to be a legitimate studio. But I didn't see "The African Queen" listed, nor any other American products, only Asian films.

The DVD video quality is definitely superior to Fox's old VHS tape--better defined, a little brighter, more colorful--and the print that Cine Korea obtained (authorized or otherwise) was clearly in better condition than the one Fox used for their tape. The DVD shows no flecks, lines, or scratches anywhere. But I couldn't help noticing some small jerkiness to the motion video at times, almost as though it were not being played back at quite the correct speed or hadn't been transferred at quite the proper frame rate. Still, the jerkiness is not at all noticeable most of the time, except in the first reel, and to confuse matters further it's even present to some degree on the prerecorded VHS tape, so maybe it's a quality inherent to the original film; I don't know.

In any case, the DVD video is acceptable, if not exactly what you might expect from a fully restored, Hollywood-studio transfer. Although the bit rate measures above average (sometimes well above), and although the colors are deeper than on the Fox VHS tape, the disc does not display as much detail or color depth as one finds in the best DVD products. What's more, the hues fluctuate very lightly throughout the film, mainly noticeable in facial close-ups. Oh well; I suppose beggars can't be choosy.

Audio:
The sound on this DVD is tonally quite different from that found on the Fox tape. The DVD's audio comes in Dolby Digital 2.0 monaural, and it's somewhat edgy, pinched, and nasal, lacking much in the way of bass or lower midrange warmth. There is also a bit of background hiss audible during quieter passages. If you use your receiver's tone controls to turn down the treble and raise the bass, you'll find it's not half bad.

Extras:
For those of you concerned about this import having a foreign language and subtitles, not to worry. The only spoken language is English, and while the DVD for reasons unknown defaults to English subtitles, you can turn them off at start-up. (I wonder, did Cine Korea intend the English subtitles for people who are hearing impaired? If so, why use them as a default setting? Maybe Cine Korea thinks everybody is hard of hearing. Huh? Eh? What's that you say?)

The extras are actually rather extensive and appear to mirror the British Region 2 import. First, there is an audio commentary by the film's cinematographer, Jack Cardiff, which is well informed and entirely entertaining. Next is a series of text notes for the production, story line, and cast and crew, all in Korean. Bring a translator. However, the stills and poster galleries need no translations and include several dozen items.

Things conclude with fifteen scene selections, but no chapter insert; an original theatrical trailer, done up at a lower bit rate than the feature film and looking it; English as the only spoken language; and
English and Korean subtitles for the movie, with Korean subtitles for Mr. Cardiff's commentary.

Parting Thoughts:
"The African Queen" is a totally delightful and entirely engrossing romance, filled with comedy, action, and adventure. That it was able to accomplish so much with essentially two mis-matched characters and a decrepit little riverboat is one of filmdom's major accomplishments, proving once again the power of pictures to move us in unexpected ways.

"By the authority vested in me by Kaiser Wilhelm II, I pronounce you man and wife. Proceed with the execution."