Feb 19, 2008

Blog Kindergarten: A Bossy Tutorial. The African Queen.

Released in 1951, this classic film starring Humphrey Bogart and Katherine Hepburn was nominated for four Academy Awards and lives in perpetuity on cable. As luck would have it, the movie aired this past weekend—and although Bossy napped through missed some of the beginning, she offers the following film synopsis:

Katherine Hepburn is a something—Bossy isn’t sure but she knows religion has to do with it—and she’s living in Africa with her something. Maybe brother? And Bogart is—Bossy isn’t sure but he has a boat.

And then something happens and it has to do with the Germans because the movie takes place in WWI. Or WWII. Anyway. And so Hepburn finds herself on Bogart’s boat:

in-boat

And Hepburn is very churchy at first and Bogart is all in his gin. But she proves to be a good old girl, learning how to steer and asking lots of questions while Bogart drinks himself into a stupor:

drinking

And all the while Hepburn is asking Bogart to do the impossible—she wants to sink a German boat in some waterway with homemade torpedoes, but the rapids are too fierce and the alligators too hungry and then there’s the little matter of the torpedoes which Bogart would have to build—or maybe he built them already, but. Anyway.

And one night Bogart gets drunker than hell and he tells Hepburn, “No way lady—we’re not sinking that German boat and on top of that you’re too skinny and you’re also an old maid.” He then collapses into a gin coma while Hepburn tosses all of his remaining booze overboard:

bottles

When he regains consciousness Bogart’s all sorry and stuff and keeps preparing a bunch of tea for Hepburn—and then he caves in and decides that sinking the German boat with homemade torpedoes is a perfectly swell idea. Also they share a kiss—or maybe it was more and there is also a lot of rain involved. Or maybe that was a different scene but anyway, Hepburn loosens up:

close

So in no time they are flying down rapids and sideswiping crocodiles on their way to the German boat. And then they sneak past a German camp—and not two minutes later they run aground and they have to climb in the water among the leeches and carry the boat through the marshes:

marshes

But in no time they’re out of the marshes and Bogart and Hepburn spy their German boat and they ready the torpedoes:

torpedoes

But something goes wrong and there’s a storm and Bogart and Hepburn fly overboard and the boat sinks:

overboard

The screen goes black.

black

But they’re not dead—Bogart is somehow on board the German boat and soon after, so is Hepburn. And Hepburn sits and tells the German crew everything—the truth about their plans to blow up the German boat:

crew

And so Hepburn and Bogart are sentenced to death by hanging. But right there on the German boat’s deck in their nooses, Bogart and Hepburn ask the ship’s German captain to marry them, because. Aww.

licorice-noose

Will Bogart and Hepburn be hanged hung? Will they make it off the German boat alive? Will Hepburn go on to write a book about how she went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, And Huston and nearly lost her mind?

end

The end.

savvysource.com


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