John Huston’s odyssey theme reprised as comedy (1951), as Humphrey Bogart cavorts like a monkey and Katharine Hepburn exploits a latent strain of Eleanor Roosevelt. It’s 1915, and Hepburn gradually persuades drunken captain Bogart to attack the German navy with his broken-down tub. The direction is often questionable, but the screenplay (by James Agee, John Collier, Huston, and Peter Viertel from C.S. Forester’s novel) is a model of tight construction. With Robert Morley and Theodore Bikel.
The African Queen
PG • 1 hour 45 min • 1952