This week’s pick is a unique look at behind the lines action during the North African campaign in the early days of World War II. Zoltan Korda directs the 1943 Columbia Pictures release of Sahara, a morale booster of a film which was based on a 1936 Soviet film called The Thirteen.

The film stars Humphrey Bogart as the tough and grizzled Sergeant Joe Gunn who is in command of an American tank, which was apart of a small American task force which was sent to get combat experience, and to help the British Eighth Army turn back the famed German Africa Corp during the Western Desert Campaign in June 1942. This occurred just five months before American ground troops landed in North Africa to help turn the tide of the war. The film is dedicated to the American IV Armored Corp which assisted in the technical aspects of the film.

Rounding out the cast of Allied soldiers and the Axis are Dan Duryea (Jimmy Doyle, An American radio operator for the tank), Bruce Bennett (‘Waco’ Hoyt, Tank Driver), Richard Nugent (Captain Jason Halliday, Royal Army Medical Corp), Lloyd Bridges (Fred Clarkson), Patrick O’ Moore (Osmond ‘Ozzie’ Bates), Guy Kingsford (Peter Stegman), Carl Harbord (Marty Williams), Louis Mercier (Jean ‘Frenchie’ Leroux, a Free French soldier fighting with the British forces), Rex Ingram (Sgt. Major Tambul, a Sudanese soldier and desert guide).

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The African Queen is kind of an odd duck in the Huston pantheon. And I’m not just saying that because I love the phrase “…is an odd duck.” Seriously! The next time you’re with your friends and see a flabby middle-aged man, balding, with glasses and a briefcase looking like he’s regretted every decision he’s ever made in his life, point at him and say, “That’s an odd duck.” Guaranteed laugh every time.

Anyway, African Queen. It’s Huston’s first “comedy,” or at least there’s a great deal more humor in it than you’d expect from Huston coming off The Red Badge of Courage and Key Largo. And much of the laughs come from the chemistry between Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn.

Actually maybe it’s more notable for being Huston’s first stab at a romantic drama. I don’t know, it’s weird. On the one hand, you have Katharine Hepburn who was known for screwball comedies, then you have Bogie who was known for being the stoic hero. The two don’t naturally seem to go together in the first place, but then Huston reverses their roles and makes Hepburn the wise-cracking tough guy and Bogie the straight man.

The Plot: Rose Sayer (Hepburn) and her brother are British missionaries in German East Africa on the eve of World War I. All but isolated, their only contact with the civilized world is crude slob of a deliveryman Charlie Allnut (Bogart), who brings them supplies and mail with the use of his dilapidated boat, The African Queen.

The war breaks out, and, after some manhandling from the Germans, Rose’s brother dies. With nothing left, Rose joins with Charlie and the two voyage downriver, careful to evade German fortresses and gunboats, crocs and leeches, and the other’s personality.

What’s Good About It: I’m not a fan of Katharine Hepburn (who, if you ever see Dick Cavett’s interview with her, was every inch of bitch in real life as she played on screen), but she and Bogie do have chemistry. Hepburn was born to play the uptight, domineering Rose, and Bogie’s happy-go-lucky hard-drinking Charlie was probably the closest he ever came to playing himself. It also earned him his only Oscar.

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Huston doesn’t give much time to Key Largo in his autobiography, save for sharing his dissatisfaction with Warner Brothers in the late 1940s and some epic stories of his gambling debts. Offhandedly he mentions that it was nominated for Best Picture and Claire Trevor won the award for Best Supporting Actress.

What small part that does focus on the film mentions Edward G. Robinson’s reluctance to take up another gangster role, having played so many of them in the past. However, there is a spot-on description of Robinson’s first scene in the movie, where he’s soaking in a bathtub and smoking a long cigar: “He looked like a crustacean with its shell off.” To put it succinctly, it’s perfect.

But despite Huston’s reticence to talk about it (or write, as it were), Key Largo is still very fun. Not as deep as The Maltese Falcon, but not quite as bang-out, mindless entertainment as Across the Pacific.

Based on the play of the same name (I would use “eponymous,” but I don’t want to sound like a snob) by Maxwell Anderson, Largo stars Bogie as WWII veteran Frank McCloud, who’s made the trip down to the eponymous Key Largo to seek out the father (Lionel Barrymore) and widow (Lauren Bacall) of a former war buddy.

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After The Maltese Falcon, Treasure of the Sierra Madre is probably Huston’s most famous film—the two may vie for the title of best known. It’s a great movie in the sense that The Godfather and Casablanca are great movies: memorable characters, rich in themes, steep in action, imminently watchable.  The kind of “old” movie for people who don’t like “old” movies.

I doubt anyone reading this won’t know the plot, but just in case, Humphrey Bogart plays Fred C. Dobbs, an out-of-luck drifter settled like dirt in one of Mexico’s dirtiest towns. He meets up with fellow drifter Bob Curtin (Tim Holt), and the two try to pick up odd jobs with even less luck than they started with. After taking brutal revenge on an employer who stiffed them, Dobbs and Curtin meet up with the grizzled and half-mad Howard (Huston father Walter, in an Oscar-winning role), a seasoned prospector looking for some men to share the costs of an expedition to mine for gold.

The three team up and head for the wilderness. Soon after, it’s clear that Howard is the most valuable member of the outfit, able to recognize Fool’s Gold and find the real stuff where the others see dust.  He’s also the mediator, picking up early on the paranoia and greed that will eventually lead to Dobbs’ ruin. At first Howard’s placating, going along with Dobbs to stave off his growing insanity, but as Dobbs’ mental instability increases, Howard becomes warily assertive, suggesting that stop while they’re ahead, planting suggestions in Dobbs’ head, and eventually convincing the group to pull up stakes and quit while they’re ahead.

When I first came back to the film after seeing it years ago, the character of Howard struck me as a first-rate candidate for a paper on behavioral studies and decision-making. The way he subtly becomes the leader who keeps the group together while consistently downplaying his role to elude confrontation made him the most interesting character for me. Of course, any such study would devalue the film, but it’s worth mentioning.

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First off, let me admit that I jumped the gun getting to Huston’s war documentaries before covering 1942’s Across the Pacific. But I’m kind of glad I did, because it provides a nice break between Let There Be Light and Treasure of the Sierra Madre—two very intense films.

Pacific is much lighter and a lot of fun. It reunites three stars from The Maltese Falcon—Bogie, Mary Astor, and Sydney Greenstreet—all playing the roles we love them in. Bogie is Rick Leland, an undercover Army agent trailing Japanese sympathizer Dr. Lorenz (Greenstreet), who’s intent on bombing the Panama Canal. Aboard the Genoa Maru, bound from Halifax to Panama. Along the way, they encounter a number of mysterious figures, chief among them the all-to-proud-to-be-an-American Joe Totsuiko (brilliantly played by Victor Sen Yung), a second-generation Japanese man who makes a point of showing up when he’s not wanted and talking at you like you’re old friends when he’s met you only five minutes prior.

First-time viewers will notice a lot of similarities between Pacific and Casablanca, from the exotic locations, international intrigue, and Bogart’s performance, right down to his iconic trenchcoat and fedora and even his name. But Pacific actually came out two months before Casablanca. Casablanca‘s the better film, yeah, but the spirit of high adventure is just as good–actually, better.

Huston doesn’t say much about the picture in his autobiography other than he was called away for Army duty right near the end of it, so director Vincent Sherman was called in to finish it. I won’t go into many details, but at the end of it, Bogie’s trapped in an impossible situation, and it was left to Sherman to get him out of it. His solution was haphazard, and Huston said he felt that the picture “lacked credibility” after that point, but that’s all of a scant five minutes, and the action is nevertheless fun.

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This marks the first in a series of articles looking at the films of John Huston, one of the most celebrated filmmakers of the 20^th Century and a fascinating man himself.

It seems sensible to start at the beginning, and an impressive beginning at that, with his first film, 1941’s The Maltese Falcon. So much has been written before on this film, so I’ll confine myself to some observations I had on this most recent rewatching and a few points I haven’t yet seen anyone else touch on.

Perhaps most surprising is that this was Huston’s directorial debut. Prior to Falcon he’d written screenplays, among them High Sierra, the film widely regarded as Bogart’s first big picture.

Knowing that, it’s surprising how established the film is, in that it doesn’t look like a director’s first film. Bogie’s Sam Spade is well crafted and believable, but it’s when the camera pans down to the silhouette of “Spade and Archer” that you know this is no amateur.

There are more than a few transitions like this—the spinning tire of the police car also comes to mind—but it never feels overdone. Many first-time directors would be too eager to show off, often to the detriment of the film, but while Falcon certainly has its share of complicated shots, they’re all made to serve the scene rather than the filmmaker.

So many mysteries inhabit the film, and they all come from the characters. Each one harbors a sordid past that’s only suggested. For all the questions surrounding it, we know much more about the flacon itself than we do the people surrounding it.

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