Retrospective 2015

Mogambo

John Ford
USA 1953
116 min
V'15

An ambitious remake of RED DUST, the racy Pre-Code romance starring Clark Gable and Jean Harlow, MOGAMBO is a beautifully crafted tale of a safari adventure gone astray, overturned by the strange love triangle that briefly unites a chorus girl, an anthropologist’s wife and a hunter – an encore role that revived Gable’s late career – in the dark heart of the African jungle. In the case of the women, Ford’s sensitive direction resulted in two alluring revelations, with Ava Gardner displaying an unexpectedly earthy innocence as the city girl strangely at ease in the remote wilderness and a young Grace Kelly, in her first major screen role, unlocking a dark and beguiling eroticism. As in Hawks’ HATARI!, the safari stands in as a vibrant metaphor for the always simmering battle between the sexes. (Harvard Film Archive)

Supporting film: EIN FABELTIER FLIEGT NACH DEUTSCHLAND

Credits
  • Clark Gable - Victor Marswell
  • Ava Gardner - Eloise y. Kelly
  • Grace Kelly - Linda Nordley
  • Donald Sinden - Donald Nordley
  • Philip Stainton - John Brown Pryce
  • John Lee Mahin after the play «Red Dust» by Wilson Collison
  • Robert Surtees
  • Frederick Young
  • A.S. Fisher
  • Frank Clarke
  • Helen Rose
Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer
35 mm
col
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