Synopsis: A grizzled, normally-solitary steamship captain in WWII-era Africa takes on a passenger who convinces him to help the war effort.

I’ve been a fan of John Huston’s for a while now, so the African Queen has definitely been on my to-see list (I’m also a fan of Humphrey Bogart’s, but that just goes without saying. There are only two types of people in the world: Humphrey Bogart fans, and people who have never seen a Bogart movie). Up until a few months ago, thanks to some legal shenanigans involving rights issues, trying to see this movie on home video has been surprisingly difficult. But I’m glad that I never made the effort to get my hands on a dodgy import, because the recently-released Blu-ray looks pretty stunning. It’s sharp, vibrant and without a hint of age.

But what about the movie itself? While I wouldn’t quite put it up there with stuff like the Treasure of the Sierra Madre and the Asphalt Jungle (which I will be watching again pretty soon, as it’s on the list), this is definitely a justified classic. A movie like this, which is really just about the interactions between two characters, lives and dies by its performances. Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn… well, do I really need to finish that sentence? They’re both legendary actors, and their performances here are certainly commensurate with their stature. They also have really great chemistry together, so by the end of the film you’re definitely rooting for them to make it. You’d think that the film might be a bit stagy, but Huston manages to keep things abundantly cinematic, including a few sequences which are surprisingly tense. Good stuff.

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Synopsis: A husband and wife find themselves on opposite sides of the courtroom when the wife decides to defend the woman that the husband is prosecuting.

Katharine Hepburn and Spencer Tracy are probably one of Hollywood’s most enduring on-screen couples; in fact, “Hepburn and Tracy” has practically become synonymous with “compelling screen couple.” And with good reason, too, as this film so aptly proves. This is actually the first film of theirs that I’ve watched, and yet another one that I’ve been meaning to see for a long time. I’ve also (and I don’t know why I’m even admitting all these woeful omissions in my film-watching repertoire) never seen anything by this film’s director, George Cukor. So this was definitely a good introduction to Hepburn and Tracy, and to Cukor.

The film was certainly quite enjoyable, though Hepburn and Tracy are so good together that it can’t help but slow down a bit in the scenes where they are apart (which is a fair amount in the first half or so). That’s not to say that other stuff was bad, not at all, but Hepburn and Tracy are both so good, and their back-and-forth dialogue so compelling and enjoyable that I would have been happy just watching them talk and argue for the entire 101 minutes. As for Cukor, he basically just stands back and lets the couple do their thing, which is definitely the wisest choice when the couple is this good.

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