The Best Adventure Movies: The African Queen

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Outside Magazine, June 2005

Outside Goes to the Movies
A Perfect 10
The African Queen

By Steven Kotler & The Editors

6. The African Queen (1951)
In no other film is the transformative power of adventure realized with such clarity. Adapted from C. S. Forester's 1935 novel, this genre-bending picture—is it a comedy, love story, or travel epic?—follows hard-drinking steamboat captain Charlie Allnut (Humphrey Bogart) and stiff lady missionary Rose Sayer (Katharine Hepburn) on a journey through the backwaters of German East Africa, at the start of World War I.

Partnered by chance, they battle

"One of the most amazing movie experiences I've ever had was when I showed a DVD on a laptop to a group of Tuaregs in the Libyan Sahara.... We chose The English Patient, since it takes place in Libya. It was likely the first movie they'd ever seen, and they couldn't take their eyes off it. I think they gave it two thumbs up!"—Richard Bangs, author and adventure travel pioneer

Class V whitewater, leeches, and each other in a quest to sink a German gunboat. Along the way they fall in love (natch), and Hepburn morphs into a hardened and enthusiastic river warrior. ("I never dreamed that any mere physical experience could be so stimulating!" she crows after a particularly hairy set of rapids.) More shocking still, Bogie turns into a gentleman. Under the guidance of powerhouse director John Huston, the lady-and-tramp interplay is flawless. Bogie's ability to broadcast onscreen frailty, which movie fans hadn't seen from him before, garnered the actor his only Oscar.

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