C.S. Forester, The African Queen

While the 1951 film of The African Queen, starring Humphrey Bogart and Catherine Hepburn is likely more well known, at this point, it was based on a 1935 novel by C.S. Forester.  The novel is both better and worse, giving greater clarity to the interior lives of the protagonists but also revealing deeply problematic racist and sexist perspectives.

The novel is set in Germany's African colonies at the outbreak of World War I.  Rose, the spinster sister of a sour missionary priest, and Allnut, the working-class mechanic and jack-of-all-trades are thrown together in the much dramatized heart of "darkest Africa," where they battle malaria, heat, and their own passions all in the name of Mother England: The decide to travel down an unnavigable river to use a rickety steamboat to blow up a massive battleship dominating a lake and preventing the English from making advances into the German territory.

True to form, the Hollywood ending is grander and more glorious than the somewhat deflating ending to the novel.  The sexism is also muted a bit, as is the racism (though both are present).  This is in part because the film gives us less access to the inner thoughts of Rose and Allnut, something we can perhaps be grateful for.