Happy Valentines Day!
Stephanie Kelley
If you’re, er, over a certain age maybe you’ve already seen these great flicks….but if you’re younger, you may have never even heard of them! None of these classic movies are bloated with wasted long minutes of preposterous computer generated effects, and there is no sweaty naked flesh cluttering up the screen, either! Released in 1951, the African Queen was filmed entirely on location in Africa in, which was a novelty for the time. Most movies with exotic locales, “Tarzan” for instance, were filmed on studio back lots with canned sound effects.
to plead their case for love….
I mean, seriously, love is not just for the young, right? As the movie begins we swoop into a remote and primitive African village where Rose Sayer (Hepburn) and her missionary brother are labouring to save the souls of the natives. Brother Sayer is singing a hymn as the villagers, who don’t understand a freaking word he is saying are nonetheless valiantly trying to sing along with cacophonous results. Rose, a proper Edwardian British lady industriously plays the organ to accompany all the caterwauling.
There’s the toot of a steam whistle, and Bogie’s character Charlie Allnut arrives on the scene. Mr. Allnut is the owner and captain of a 30 foot long tramp steamboat named “The African Queen”….she is his pride and joy. Charlie travels up and down the Ulanga River delivering mail and necessities to folks living out in the bush like the Sayers. Before he leaves, Charlie warns the Sayers about the war. It’s 1914, and living in the bush they had no clue that WW I had begun. No sooner has Charlie left than Germans march into the village, round up the natives, burn down the huts and bash Brother Sayer in the head. He contracts a fever and passes on, leaving Rose alone in the burned out remains of the village.
How do you demonstrate true love? Getting into leech infested water to help your one true love tow a boat through a horrible swamp gets top awards in my book!
“A Matter of Life and Death” is a terrific romantic fantasy set during WW II. British Bomber Squadron Leader Peter Carter, wonderfully portrayed by the suave David Niven, is nursing his mortally damaged plane back home after a bombing run. The aircraft has taken a hit, and is on fire. Captain Carter has ordered his crew to bail out, without telling them that the bullets that have caused the fire and killed Sparks the radio operator also destroyed his own parachute. Captain Carter won’t be bailing out.
In his few remaining mortal moments as Captain Carter desperately works the radio to try to tell someone what happened he manages to contact June, an American radio operator at a British outpost. In the few minutes that they speak with each other they live a lifetime… and fall in love. These scenes are simply heart rending… June’s beautiful face, her tear filled eyes as she talks to Carter before the inevitable end are making me choke up just writing this!
At last, the flames in the cockpit are licking at Captain Carter, and he says goodbye to June, opting to leap to his death rather than burn up in the doomed plane. And then, he wakes up washed up on a beach.
It seems that Conductor 71, the Celestial Agent sent to pick Carter up and escort him to the Other World, completely lost track of his target in the heavy fog and so Peter missed his date with death. In the meantime, Peter assumes that he’s dead….but soon realizes that something very odd is afoot. The first person he meets on the road is none other than the lovely June! And they proceed to fall in love for the second time…in person.
But Conductor 71 is in trouble. He must collect Peter, but he will not cooperate. He claims it was not his fault that he survived, and now he has an obligation to fulfill, in his love for June.
Conductor 71 (a very amusing character , by the way, a foppish French aristocrat who’d been guillotined during the Revolution) urges Peter to accept death but Peter demands that the matter be appealed before the Celestial Court. The fantasy scenes in this fabulous story are simply wonderful…Heaven is reached by a giant celestial elevator.
In the end, we learn that nothing is stronger than Law in the Universe, but on Earth, nothing is stronger than Love.
‘I Know Where I’m Going” is a 1945 movie produced and directed by Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger, who also made “A Matter of Life and Death”. In this, another war time romance, but this one set at the end of WW II, we meet the young and ambitious career woman Joan Webster. She’s a middle class girl, whose father is a staid and respectable banker. But she’s managed to grab the brass ring, it seems…. She has become engaged to her industrialist boss, one of the wealthiest men in Great Britain. She meets her father for a drink to tell him the news before she embarks from Manchester to be married on the remote and wild island of Kiloran, in the Scottish Hebrides.
Her father congratulates her, but does remark that this fellow might be rich, but isn’t he old enough to be her father? The plot begins to thicken…
Her journey begins by train, and ultimately she will leave the mainland at Mull to take a boat to Kiloran. However, when she reaches Mull there’s a slight problem…. A heavy fog has settled in and the boat can’t come to pick her up. And, here is where she encounters dashing naval officer Torquil MacNeil, who is home on a brief leave. After waiting on the dockside for the boat that never comes, Joan heads up the hill to the big house to wait out the fog.
Here she meets the eccentric Colonel, who keeps falcons, and soon the mistress of the manse, Catriona Campbell, appears like a creature out of a legend as she strides up a hill, her hair billowing in the wind with a pack of Irish Wolfhounds at her heels, a shotgun in her hand and a brace of dead rabbits! It’s all so very Gaelic!
But the attraction between Joan and Torquil is immediate, and she knows trouble when she sees it. Torquil tells her that if she counts her ceiling beams that night her first wish will come true…which she does as she drifts off to sleep. She asks for the fog to blow away, and you can’t say that the Universe doesn’t have a sense of humour. She awakens to no fog, but gale force winds. No boats to Kiloran today for you, Missy!
Torquil takes her into the village so she can radio her fiancé with the news, and on the bus trip in we get an amusing view of this clash of cultures. The fat cat industrialist, Joan’s fiancé, arouses derision amongst the local folks. They don’t know who Joan is and so they speak freely in front of her. Why, the fool is building a pool when he’s got a whole loch and bay to swim in! He orders his fish from the city when he’s got a river full of salmon and expensive unused tackle!
Torquil notes that the fellow could in fact buy fish from the locals, but chooses instead to give his business to city fishmongers.
And, to stir the plot a bit more we discover that Torquil is himself actually the laird and ancestral owner of Kiloran… but he’s rented the place to Joan’s industrialist boss because he is land rich but cash poor. If he leases the place for 3 years he can afford to live there for 6 years. Highland economics, he explains.
Joan listens to the locals, and then we get a taste of the personality of Mr. Industrialist, whom we’ve not yet met. The postmistress raises him on the radio and Joan explains her predicament. He booms back at her that she should go stay with some rich friends of his, who are also renting someone’s ancestral castle. “They’re the only people around here worth knowing” he tells Joan over the radio, as everyone in the post office overhears this patronizing remark.
Joan hands a pound note to the postmistress to pay, but she hasn’t the cash to break it. Torquil informs Joan that she would seldom see a pound note. Joan says, “So people around here are very poor, I suppose.”
“Not poor, they just haven’t got money.”
“It’s the same thing.”
“Oh no, Torquil corrects her, It’s something quite different.”
And here is one of the hubs of this delightful story….the clash of cultures, and what is more important, money and fine clothes and fripperies or true love, peace and contentment?
What do you think? All of these movies can be streamed on your computer, if you decide to spend a romantic evening with one (or all) of them let me know if they sparked your romantic senses!
