While filming this movie in the Congo, everybody on the crew, including Katherine Hepburn, became extremely illl with dysentery from drinking the water. Everybody that is, except Humphrey Bogart, who only drank Whiskey.

In The African Queen, Humphrey Bogart and Katharine Hepburn go down an African river to escape WWI German troops, but also - and I never think this self-imposed mission is ever justified - sink a German boat patrolling the lake down-river. It's an adventure film, so a bit of a picaresque - never my favorite story structure (it's just one damn thing after another), but we're really watching this unlikely couple fall in love, so it didn't bother me too much. Bogart is symbolically associated with the wilderness, imitating animals even when he doesn't mean to, while Hepburn is a prim minister's sister and serves as catalyst for his spiritual betterment. But his wildness changes her too, unfetters her. We really are watching an osmosis of sorts, the evolution of a relationship in a pressure cooker (at this is a steam ship, after all). There's certainly something more going on under the surface and I like that, and my expectations were nicely confounded by the two leads not exactly playing to type. And it ends on a wonderfully romantic moment as well.