The African Queen

"The African Queen", #17/65, 1951
This movie takes place in 1914, at the very beginning of World War I. It takes place in Africa, and the African Queen is the name of a boat that Humphrey Bogart's character, Charlie, operates. He's a rough around the edges, blue collar worker, with a heart of gold. And he teams up (through a series of unfortunate events) with Katherine Hepburn's character, Rose, who is a proper, timid missionary (pretty petticoat and fancy hat).

The film was originally #17, and then drastically dropped to #65, which was the biggest drop in rank (without being removed from the list entirely).

This film has all sorts of interesting trivia to it. First of all, the first choice of actors for the two lead roles were not Hepburn and Bogart. But, it seemed to work out well for the filmmakers to end up with these two, as they are true superstars. Just like the Top 100 Movies list, AFI has a list of 100 Stars. Humphrey Bogart is the #1 male star, and Katherine Hepburn is the #1 female star.

Rose is living in an African village with her brother, as missionaries. Charlie has some kind of connection with them, I think delivering mail and just being the missionaries' connection to the outside world. Charlie shows up, and has lunch with them. There is this pretty hilarious scene over lunch with long, awkward, silent pauses between their forced small talk, and Charlie's stomach keeps growling in the pauses.
Then, the movie really kicks off when the Nazi Germans come in and destroy the whole village. And it was the most awful scene, they just run in with guns and set everything on fire and round up the villagers and haul them off somewhere, and leave Rose and her brother. But, dealing with the travesty proves too much for the brother and he passes away. Shortly after that, Charlie shows up and rescues Rose from this helpless, empty state she's left in and they board the African Queen.

The rest of the movie is this cute story of them living on this boat, getting to know each other, falling in love with each other, and having these desperate attempts to stop the Nazis. It gets really drawn on and slowly paced, but at the same time, it wasn't bad. The slowness just gave the audience the same feeling that the characters in the movies had of this drawn-out, never ending but still striving feeling, growing ever more hopeless, but still filled with this incredible motivation to get things done.

Nearing the end of their journey, there was a part where the river gets so narrow, covered by weeds, and current-less, that the boat simply won't move, so Charlie gets out, walks through the water while pulling the boat. (I tried to find the clip on youtube, but no such luck). When he gets back in the boat, he's covered in leeches. And Charlie is freaked out and shaking over them while Rose is putting salt on them to get them off. It's a scene that shows great acting by Bogart, and when asked in an interview about it, Bogart assured everyone that it was not great acting, he was thoroughly afraid of leeches.

This movie is not one I would particularly seek out to watch again, but if I was flipping through channels and came across it, I would stop and watch, at least for a little while. I think ultimately, the slow pace would lead me to change the channel again. But, it really was a great film, and I certainly think it belongs on the top movie list.

And, the last piece of trivia for you... The role of Charlie in the "African Queen" is the only Oscar of Humphrey Bogart's career.

The Philadelphia Story

"The Philadelphia Story", #51/44, 1940
This movie was a real struggle. I started it one night, and I couldn't handle it, so I had to stop it and started another day. The female lead was Katharine Hepburn, who played the mom in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner". Apparently, she was a really big star in her day, which I didn't really know. There were a few male leads in this film, but the most noteworthy ones were Cary Grant and James Stewart. All three of these actors show up a few more times on the Top 100 movie list, and I bet that you would at least recognize  their faces. The only recap I'm going to give is to say that it's about multiple guys chasing after one girl. But, don't watch this movie. You can definitely find a better movie that's stars these people, maybe even together.

Guess Who

"Guess Who's Coming to Dinner", #99/removed, 1967. This movie may be familiar to you if you've see the 2005 remake with Ashton Kutcher and Zoe Saldana (the girl from Avatar and the new Star Trek movie before she was the girl from Avatar and the new Star Trek). I've seen the remake before I watched the original, so I spent a lot of the movie making comparisons between the two. The common set up the parents of a girl meeting her boyfriend, who is of a different race. The biggest difference I noticed between the movies, is that in the remake, the boy is white, and in this original, the boy is black. I was pretty surprised by this, but there are a lot of reasons why the remake needed to make this change. The original was made and takes place right in the middle of the Civil Rights Movements. The couple in "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" is engaged, and ready to be married quickly. One of the lines in the movie explains that the two of them getting married would actually be illegal in 16 states. That shocked me. So in that movie, it made sense for the parents to struggle with this idea, and they fought many internal battles throughout the movie trying to accept it. These parents actually wanted to accept it. In the remake, they had to switch the racial roles because in the remake, the father was adamant against the boy, which is why the dad had to be black and the boy had to be white. In 2005, it was funny for a black dad to be against a white boyfriend, and it would have been considered horrible for a white dad to be against a black boyfriend.

So, that's my rant on the race issue of it all... now, on to the actual movie critique... this movie was not great. It was pretty slow, and the entire movie took place in one day. There were a few gems in there. Like when this one girl appeared in about three insignificant scenes, and then didn't reappear in anything significant later on. Or the fact that the climax of the movie was a dinner, and more and more guests were added to the dinner, which resulted in the phrase "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" actually being said throughout it. The daughter's reaction when her mother's coworker shows up at the house. But, even with those few gems, I would suggest watching the funnier remake of it before you watch the original.