The African Queen

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

Rose Sayer and her brother Samuel are English missionaries in 1914 German East Africa. Their rare contact with the outside world is through Charlie Allnut, who delivers their occasional mail on his steam- powered boat, The African Queen. The Germans destroy their village. Samuel is injured and dies, broken-hearted. Charlie offers to take Rose with him.

At first, they are stiffly polite to each other. He respectfully calls her “Miss,” and she calls him “Mr. Allnut.” She decides that they must help fight the Germans by using their explosives to blow up the powerful German gunboat, the Louisa. He becomes angry and frustrated by her insistence on what he sees as a dangerously reckless idea, and she becomes disgusted and furious when he gets drunk. He calls her a “crazy psalm-singing skinny old maid.” She pours all his liquor overboard.

He decides that she will change her mind when she sees how dangerous the river is, and takes her over the rapids. She is thrilled, telling him that she is “filled with admiration” for his skill, and that “I never dreamed any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!” Charmed by her enthusiasm and praise, he still insists that they cannot possibly attack the Louisa. The river is all but impossible to navigate, and a German fort blocks their path. She insists, and as they face challenges together they learn to respect, rely on, and finally love each other. After a tender night together, she asks him, “Mr. Allnut, dear. There’s something I must know. What’s your first name?”

They make it past the fort and survive bugs, rapids, leeches, and the reeds that strangle the river, finally approaching the Louisa. But they are captured and sentenced to death by the captain. Charlie asks for a last request — that they be executed as husband and wife. The captain quickly marries them, and just as they are about to be hung, Charlie’s torpedo strapped to the African Queen hits the Louisa, and Mr. and Mrs. Allnut swim to shore together.

This is one of the finest and most satisfying of the “two diverse characters must take a journey together and learn to like and respect each other along the way” genre. Rose and Charlie are opposites. And yet they are perfectly suited to each other.

We first see Charlie hideously out of place sipping tea with Rose and Samuel and trying to hide his growling stomach. “Nature, Mr. Allnut, is what we were put in this world to rise above,” she tells him later. And yet, in another sense, Rose and Samuel were out of place in Africa. Ultimately, Rose is not comfortable “rising above” nature, and indeed grows to love it, as she gives up some of the strictures of civilization and appreciates the beauty and “stimulation” of the natural world. Charlie learns to appreciate some of the beauties of civilization; to take the challenge and the responsibility of participating in the fight against the Germans, to have a relationship of trust and tenderness.

Humphrey Bogart won a well-deserved Oscar for this performance. Katharine Hepburn, who was also nominated, said that her performance was based on director John Huston’s suggestion that she play Rose as Eleanor Roosevelt. Compare this performance to her appearance in “Pat and Mike” a year later, in which she played a world-class athlete.

The movie is based on a novel of the same name by C.S. Forester, but the romance was added by screenwriters James Agee and John Huston. Adults who enjoy this movie might like to see “White Hunter, Black Heart,” a backstage look at the making of this film, concentrating on John Huston’s elephant hunting.

Look at a map of Africa to see where this took place.

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The Maltese Falcon

Posted on December 13, 2002 at 5:17 am

Plot: Sam Spade (Humphrey Bogart) is a private detective. A woman who says her name is Ruth Wonderly (Mary Astor) comes to see him, asking for help in finding her sister. Sam sends his partner, Miles Archer (Jerome Cowan) to follow her when she meets Floyd Thursby, the man she thinks her sister is with, and both Archer and Thursby are killed. It turns out that the woman has given him a false name. She is really Brigid O’Shaughnessy, and it turns out it is not her sister she is seeking, but a small, jeweled statue of a falcon, and she is mixed up with some people who will do anything to get it.

One of those people is Joel Cairo (Peter Lorre), who comes to see Sam to insist — with a gun — that he be allowed to search Sam’s office to see if it is there. Sam is not at all intimidated by Joel, but allows him to search. Also after the statue is Mr. Gutman, “the fat man” (Sidney Greenstreet), with his “gunsel,” Wilmer. They alternately threaten and attempt to bribe Sam, while Brigid appeals to his protective nature and his heart. But Sam turns them all over to the police, including Brigid, whom he loves.

Discussion: One of the most interesting aspects of this classic movie is the way that Sam Spade thinks though the moral dilemmas. When he is deciding whether to tell the police about Brigid, he is very explicit about weighing every aspect of his choices. It is not an easy decision for him; he has no moral absolutes. On one hand, he loves her, and he did not think much of his partner. On the other, he does not trust her, he does not think she trusts him, and he knows that they could not go on together, each waiting to betray or be betrayed. And he has some pride; he says that when your partner is killed, you are supposed to “do something.” While it may be good for business not to appear too ethical, it is bad for business to allow a partner in a detective firm to get killed without responding. If he turns her over to the police, he loses her. But if he does not, he loses a part of himself, his own kind of integrity.

When this movie was made, moviegoers were used to cool, debonair detectives (like Philo Vance and Nick Charles, both played by William Powell), a sort of cross between Sherlock Holmes and Fred Astaire. But Sam Spade, created by Dashiell Hammett based on his experiences as a detective, was a modern day version of the cowboy, a loner with his own sense of honor.

This was the first movie directed by John Huston, who also wrote the screenplay, but he was already a master. Watch the two scenes where Sam goes to talk to Gutman, and see how the camera angles in the first scene lead the viewer to suspect that Sam’s drink is spiked (it isn’t), and then how different angles are used in the second one to make the viewer confident that it won’t be (it is).

Questions for Kids:

· What does Sam mean when he says the statue is “the stuff dreams are made of”?

· Where is Sam faced with moral conflicts? How does he resolve them? What are his reasons?

Connections: Bogart appeared as a similarly tough detective, Philip Marlowe, in “The Big Sleep,” based on the novel by Raymond Chandler. The books by Hammett and Raymond Chandler are well worth reading. Note the director’s father, Walter Huston, in an uncredited brief appearance as Captain Jacobi. Jerome Cowan, who appears briefly as Miles Archer, plays the prosecuting attorney who tries to prove that Kris Kringle is not Santa Claus in “Miracle on 34th Street.”

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