Most streaming platforms opt to give priority to recent titles, since they consider that their hook is much bigger when it comes to attracting the attention of the public. Luckily, great classics also appear in their catalogs from time to time and now Amazon has just included the essential ‘The African Queen’undoubtedly one of the best adventure movies of all time, in the Prime Video catalog.
An undisputed classic
Adaptation of the homonymous novel by CS Forester, ‘The African Queen’ is one of the most emblematic titles in the filmography of both John Hustonfilm director, as of Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, the two great protagonists of the function. In it we are told how a somewhat alcoholic sea captain and a puritanical missionary flee from German troops shortly after the outbreak of World War I. On paper they couldn’t be more different, but their relationship will evolve as they do everything they can to stay alive.
A basic detail that must be taken into account in the case of seeing ‘The African Queen’ for the first time today is that it is a film released in 1951, so perhaps there are certain aspects in the dynamics between its two main characters that collide seen from today. Beyond that there is very little to object to. a film that knows how to move like a fish in water mixing genres and that the thing never creaks.
In fact, Huston embroiders it from the staging -brilliant especially the use of Technicolor-, both capturing all the particularities of shooting in natural settings in Africa, something quite unusual for the time, but also raising even more the already for yes remarkable script. And of course, Bogart and Hepburn are the icing on the cakeendowing his characters with tremendous humanity, fully embracing that sense of adventure that makes ‘The African Queen’ a unique film and also leaving aside any type of glamour.
And it is easy to see the influence of ‘The African Queen’ in a multitude of later authors and films. Some of the most obvious cases are those of Clint Eastwoodwhich in ‘White Hunter, Black Heart’ focuses on various experiences that preceded the filming of Huston’s film, and dwayne johnsonWell, ‘Jungle Cruise’ is remarkably inspired by the film at hand, just as the same attraction in the Disney theme parks did previously.
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