Not Just Queen For The Day

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We watched 'The African Queen' again this afternoon, for the umpteenth time, a film that has been a constant part of my movie landscape for as long as I can remember, and one of which I will never tire of watching. I remember exactly where I saw it first: as a young child, one Christmas, at my nan and grandad's house in Rotton Park Road, Birmingham, the house in which I was born nearly seventy-two years ago. The film was, for many years, repeated on TV every Christmas Day or Boxing Day here in the UK, which in retrospect seems an odd choice of seasonal movie programming, given its setting and narrative. It's kind of hokey and arch in its delivery, but it's really carried by Katherine Hepburn's always wonderful performance and the presence she brought to the screen, no matter the rôle played. Bogart was simply Bogart as always; veering between underplayed to mildly frenetic, but always a joy to watch.

We have a number of staple go-to old movies in this house; most of them made either before we were born, or when we were growing up: 'The Third Man', 'Brief Encounter', just about any version of 'The Thirty-nine Steps', and most particularly the Robert Donat version. Of later films, the ones we saw together at the cinema when were still a young couple still get frequent re-runs by us to this day: all of the Dirty Harry films and the slightly earlier spaghetti westerns starring Clint Eastwood, for example; and his self-directed 'High Plains Drifter' of 1973. All of the movies we watch time and again fulfil much the same role as familiar folk tales or children's stories, none of which fade or bore in the retelling. A good movie should  occupy the same rôle as fable, reinforcing life and history's verities in fictional form for future generations...

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