Mogambo (1953)

Best movie of this year hands down!

Don't Believe the Hype

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

Excellent and certainly provocative... If nothing else, the film is a real conversation starter.

John Ford was one of the finest craftsmen in the history of the cinema, and even though this movie isn't one of his greatest films it still is very interesting to watch. During the course of the movie I felt like I was watching an alternative safari version of "The Great Gatsby" but without the triangle between Gatsby Tom and Daisy, but it is kind of a gender difference with this movie dealing with a man and two women. The movie was shot entirely on an African safari just like "King Solomon's Mines" (1950) was only comparison between the two is that this one was a better movie. The movie stars Clark Gable as Vincent Marswell who owns a big game trapping company in the country of Kenya, and in the beginning of the movie he meets an American woman named Eloise Kelly (Ava Gardner) and they start becoming friends after she came to the safari to meet someone that was supposed to be there but never showed up to meet her. Then after Kelly is supposed to leave a married couple show up whose names are Donald Nordley (Donald Sinden) and his wife Linda (Grace Kelly). Marswell and Linda are attracted to each other but it isn't that obvious at first glance even though it gets more obvious. During the making of this movie Clark Gable had a tough time with Ford due to his terrible treatment towards Ava Gardner on the set of the movie and because of that this was the only film that the two men ever worked on together. Ford was an expert with using his surroundings to frame a movie making a movie of his a visual treat to look at, the performances are decent but if I had to choose my personal favorites come from both Gable and Kelly, though I thought that Gardner could have tweaked her performance a little bit even though it was very good and because of her work she along with Grace Kelly got Oscar nominations. Like "King Solomon's Mines" this is a very informative film to watch and the cinematography by none other than Robert Surtees makes the scenery of both films very breathtaking. Though this isn't a great movie it is a very well-written one even though the script could have been improved upon. Even though I still would recommend this movie to anyone interested in learning about African wildlife.

Directed by John Ford, this better than average remake of screenwriter John Lee Mahin's adventure drama Red Dust (1932) also stars Clark Gable in the leading male role, but replaces Jean Harlow with Ava Gardner and Mary Astor with Grace Kelly as well as altering the story. Instead of Gable running a rubber plantation for its owner, and having an affair with the owner's wife, Gable is a big game hunter who has a dalliance with one of his client's wives.Donald Sinden plays the cheated on husband that Gene Raymond played in the original. Gardner plays a former showgirl (in lieu of the "on the run" prostitute that Harlow played) that loves and understands "Gable" more than the "pristine" wife, blonde Kelly in this one vs. Astor, that falls for his testosterone oozing, if somewhat crude character which provides a stark contrast to her more proper husband.It's a credit to Gable that his sex appeal endured for so long, such that he could credibly play the role in both films. Gardner, who sings "Comin' through the Rye", earned her only Academy Award recognition with a Best Actress nomination; Kelly (Best Actress in The Country Girl (1954) a year later) received her first (and only other) with a Supporting Actress nod.Lots of great African scenery action from three time Oscar winning Color Cinematographer Robert Surtees and Freddie Young, who would go on to win three Oscars for his work, starting with Lawrence of Arabia (1962)).

By no means MOGAMBO is among John Ford's best work, nor is Gable or Kelly's, but, it brings Ava Gardner her the one and only Oscar nomination, this reason alone can suffice my curiosity and leapfrog onto the top tier of my watch list. Although the selling point is the African safari its exotic fauna, this film is a standard combo of location shooting and studio imitation, particularly feels ill at ease when the two drastically incompatible part bluntly encounter during the confrontation scenes in the gorilla field, one can feasibly detect actors are acting in front of the footages of the wild creatures, since the qualities of their cinematography are conspicuously inconsistent. We can never catch the vicariousness after all.The storyline is a meandering love triangle with a twist of adultery, Gable is Victor Marswell. a "supposed" charming, middle-aged bachelor and game hunter in Kenya, insouciantly circles around a freewheeling American widow Eloise (Gardner) and a young English wife Linda (Kelly), meanwhile, casually smuggles some wildlife from this primitive land. It is quite awful to watch now, not only because Gable has long passed his crest of his irresistible charisma, but his vocation is innately abhorrent, love is a too precious gift he should not deserve, not to mention from two diametrically disparate belles. Unfortunately this is the philosophy which the Golden Age of Hollywood spoon-fed to its audience (and the picture was a great box office success too). Gable is weathered but unerringly macho, stubbornly guarantees the aesthetics at then. Grace Kelly, soon would win her undeserved Oscar in THE COUNTRY GIRL (1954, 6/10) and reach the zenith of her short but sensational film career with Hitchcock's one-two punch REAR WINDOW (1954, 8/10) and DIAL M FOR MURDER (1954, 8/10) before retreating to be a princess, in here, she also got an Oscar nomination for BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS, but her character is miserably off-putting, her unreasoning crush on Victor has never been effectively pulled off, although she does fully represent the usual feminine vulnerability to the hilt. Thankfully, Ava Garner is the saving grace in the movie, despite being equally badly materialized as a commodity to men's libido, she strives to be the woman who is decidedly intent on what she wants, most of time, she is stranded in her low tide during the tug-of-love, nevertheless she is perpetually exuberant and fully charged, the time when she feeds the baby elephant and rhinoceros with bananas is priceless, also when a leopard passes by in her tent at night, her response is simultaneously spontaneous and droll. Her presence can validly let viewers forget what a shoddy story it is as long as eventually she is the prize winner. I give the film a generous 6/10 in light of that, albeit all its drawbacks, at the very least it is a coherent star vehicle, and Ava Garner who should be tenderly remembered for her outright beauty and gallantry, even though her entire filmography is not that impressive, she is a one-of- the-kind screen diva who cannot be duplicated in this era.

Mogambo (1953)I can't look at a movie like this without asking who is in control, who is being abused, who is plundering, and why does the movie not talk about these discrepancies of power? African Queen, made just two years earlier, faces the same problem from a different direction, narrowing our view to the changing of two archetypes toward mutual understanding, largely avoiding the cultural problem. In Mogambo, the movie expands outward, with decreasing interest and believability. Yes, it has to be said, there are some stunning wildlife scenes, and some genuine (and valuable) indigenous singing and shots of tribal Africans on location. The film was largely shot in Africa, and it feels authentic in that way, a long way from earlier versions shot on a Hollywood lot.But Mogambo, a remake of the better "Red Dust," is a kind of embarrassingly bad movie in other ways. There's just no getting around the poorly developed characters, the almost non-existent "plot" (nothing much happens) and even the unconvincing romances, which should have won me over since I'm a sucker. John Ford is famously a masculine director, just as was John Huston ("African Queen"), and Ford became famous for making movies about the changing of one world order for another--the American Western. In a weird, simplistic way, this is another Western, with outsiders improbably facing strange territory and hostility, and with everyone misunderstanding at least something that leads them astray. The starring actor makes it worthwhile, for those of us who admire him, Clark Gable. Grace Kelly also appears, but as usual is largely ornamental and too ivory to advance the plot.Ava Gardner is whole other problem. She's full of life but has a miserable script to read from, and is made to be a caricature of a ditzy New York woman in wild Africa. Well, Ford "fleshes" her out in his own way, but Gable is more respectful, as usual. Either way, her performance ends up crippling some of the authenticity of the rest of it. She does have a fearless and quaint way with the animals (and the baby elephants in particular are super cute). In fact, if animal rights concern you, you might have trouble with all the trapped, hunted, and caged wildlife. Seen from 2010, this is a revealing and disturbing and frivolous, white colonialist's view of Africa. If you aren't distracted by the glib Gardner and the artificial Kelly, or by the attempts to be humorous, and to set the two woman against each other (one proper, in a dress, the other less so, in pants), you'll see some interesting footage. Intermittent footage is not my idea of a good movie.