Mogambo (1953)

I like movies that are aware of what they are selling... without [any] greater aspirations than to make people laugh and that's it.

While it doesn't offer any answers, it both thrills and makes you think.

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

It's funny, it's tense, it features two great performances from two actors and the director expertly creates a web of odd tension where you actually don't know what is happening for the majority of the run time.

In John Ford's "Mogambo", a remake of Victor Fleming's "Red Dust" from 1932, Clark Gable (who also starred in the Fleming film) plays a "great white hunter" – his character even uses the term, minus the adjective "great", in a disparaging self-description – who has a thing first for Kelly, a worldly young woman (Ava Gardner) stranded at his safari camp and then, shortly after, falls hard for Mrs. Nordley(Grace Kelly), the wife of one of his safari clients (Donald Sinden).It's rather unusual to find a remake of a film in which the lead is the same as in the original – Sean Connery in "Thunderball" and "Never Say Never Again" springs to mind, thanks in part to the memorable clue that is the title of the remake - but when it does happen, it's an interesting situation for the viewer. Obviously, comparisons will inevitably occur, so let's clear the big plate off the table right away and agree that "Mogambo", much like "Never Say Never Again", is not as good a film as its original version. At all. The secondary characters are, in general, underdeveloped – Eric Pohlmann and Philip Stainton are simply clichés – and, as his would-be primary love interest, Grace Kelly is weak. On the other hand, it is worth watching, particularly if you've seen the earlier film, and not only to see how the legend of Gable, accrued over his career, weighs on that same actor's shoulders in this updated African take on the classic love triangle. Ava Gardner is distracting and light, not the incredible sexual force that Jean Harlow was in the first film, and there's a wonderful sequence involving gorillas that makes all of the rest of the stock footage from wildlife shots look Tarzan-amateur; in fact, the quasi-Tarzan feel that runs through most of the film carries its own irony, given that Gable had apparently been in the running for the role of the Ape Man that Weissmuller landed in 1932.For me, this film is a special treat because of a terrific back-story that my Galician friend told me about it. During the Franco years in Spain, there was heavy censorship of film themes and content, which was often made easier by the practice of dubbing rather than using subtitles. When this film was distributed into Spain, because the idea of adultery was unacceptable to the dictatorship, the theme of "Mogambo" was changed, just a little, in the dubbing. Mrs Nordley, the wife, was quietly and quickly changed, thanks to a few alterations in the dialogue, into Mr. Nordley's sister. Apparently, it was less uncomfortable for the powers in charge to watch scenes ostensibly between a brother and sister that were therefore fraught with incestuous tension than to imagine for a moment that a wife might stray from her marital path.

Habitat destruction, gorilla poaching. Clark Gable kills a panther, kills a gorilla, and smokes 300 cigarettes and gets drunk. Grace Kelly is a Bimbo, Ava Gardner lounges around a lot.Lots of scene of natives dancing around and singing, threatening, doing bwana's bidding. Stock scenes of gorillas charging. Elephants, hippos, crocodiles. Clark makes out with Grace Kelly, but stays with Ava in the end.In the last scene, Ava Gardner's character is shoving off on a boat, then changes her mind, jumps in the water and wades back to Clark baby. I was expecting her to get eaten by a crocodile, but no such luck.I watched the whole thing in French, didn't understand a word of it, but didn't need to. Clark is ultra macho, Grace is a silly white girl. Ava comes off as a bit mannish.

Clark Gable reprises his original role in "Red Dust" for this 1953 film.Ava Gardner comes across as a tempestuous, yet common woman who is stood up in Kenya and winds up in the Gable camp. He portrays a game hunter in this film.Romance between the two is interrupted when Grace Kelly arrives with her British scientist husband,who is in Africa to study the gorillas.While you hear the traditional native African songs during this safari, the film certainly isn't about animal hunting. It deals with Gable being torn by Gardner and Kelly.Gardner lets down her hair and reveals that she is a war widow. Kelly is an erudite British lady with an authentic British accent to boot.Good thing there is romance blossoming here; otherwise, this would have made for one dull film. Kelly's performance as a straight-laced British lady smitten by Gable and therefore undergoing a complete personality change is engrossing. She is a repressed woman and this makes for some interesting fireworks among all concerned.

I've never seen "Red Dust", of which John Ford's "Mogambo" is a remake, so I can't compare the two. What I can say is that not enough happens in "Mogambo" to make it anything more than an average love triangle story. The movie deserves analysis for another reason. This story of a group of people on safari in central Africa came out around the time that many of the African countries started gaining independence, along with other former colonies in Asia. The new presence of countries with non-white populations forced a reevaluation of the world for the majority-white countries. For years, Europeans and Americans had simply viewed Africa as the "dark continent", but now a collection of people from the United States and England are walking through it, even making occasional contact with the native peoples. Of course, the treatment of this is still a little bit backwards, and I suspect that these tourists might come across as the stereotype of the ugly American.Basically, the movie works better if you view it not in terms of its plot, but as a look at the forced new view of the world. Otherwise, it comes across as the sort of movie that they made just because they could.