Its modesty of ambition makes The African Queen among the least complex classics of Hollywood’s waning “golden age” (for a movie with a World War I setting and a colonialist context, it offers little interpretive earth to excavate), but leaves plenty of time for Huston and company to lovingly appraise the personae of two Tinseltown darlings. […] Scene after scene showcases little more than playful banter, nuzzling, and touchingly mild breakthroughs in intimacy […]. What Hepburn and Bogart find in these scenes is the rich pleasures of affectionate camaraderie— the joy of unexpectedly finding one’s equal—and it has everything to do with the slippage that occurs between character and actor. We know that Bogie only had eyes for Bacall, and Kate would never dream of betraying old Spence.
— Matthew Connolly (Slant Magazine)
[Screenwriter Peter Viertel] was recruited in Europe by his friend John Huston to help polish a script written in Hollywood by James Agee. Before embarking for Africa, Viertel met with Huston in the English countryside, where it soon became apparent that Huston’s only real interest in the picture was the opportunity it provided for big-game hunting — specifically the chance to shoot an elephant. It also became clear that he wanted Viertel along mainly as a hunting companion, his job as screenwriter being merely an excuse.
— Jonathan Rosenbaum (Chicago Reader)
At the start of the First World War, in the middle of Africa’s nowhere, a gin soaked riverboat captain is persuaded by a strong-willed missionary to go down river and face-off a German warship.