Mogambo

Big Fat Search

Starring: Clark Gable, Grace Kelly, Ava Gardner, Donald Sinden, Philip Stainton
Directed by: John Ford
Binding: DVD
Published: 2006-06-20

$9.99

Features:

Closed-captioned
Color
DVD-Video
Subtitled

Mogambo

Editorial Review:

"Hey! A kangaroo," Eloise "Honey Bear" Kelly says when she sees a baby rhinoceros being lifted from an African pit. A Broadway showgirl stranded in the African jungle, Eloise is better suited for the urban jungle. Yet one look at safari guide Victor Marswell and she knows exactly where she wants to be. Times change but the fun remains when Clark Gable portrays man's-man Victor in a sassy, vibrant remake of Gable's 1932 Red Dust. Ava Gardner plays tough-hided, vulnerable-hearted Eloise. And Grace Kelly is the prim anthropologist's wife who catches Victor's roving eye. Both women earned Oscar? nominations,* with Kelly also winning a Supporting Actress Golden Globe. Directed by John Ford and filled with his lung-swelling zest for the great outdoors, Mogambo is classic entertainment for anyone's great indoors.
This remake of the 1932 Red Dust is famous for using the very same romantic leading man--21 years after the fact. But when that leading man is Clark Gable, what's a little gray hair in the temples? Gable was certainly still the great strutting rooster of American movies in 1953, when Mogambo made him a safari guide juggling two much younger women. First up is good-time girl Ava Gardner, who's game for a little harmless romp with Gable after she gets stood up by a playboy in the African jungle. But when Grace Kelly--the proper wife of a visiting anthropologist (Donald Sinden)--arrives on the scene, a new affair begins. The location shooting is much in the vein of King Solomon's Mines, although the story is much more intimate. This feels like a bit of a holiday for Hollywood's top director, John Ford, and not one of his most committed pictures. Still, Ford's unparalleled eye for backlit exteriors and for the way people move around in rooms is on display, even when the script wobbles. People always joke about Gable being too old for this movie, but that doesn't take into account his durable movie-star appeal--he certainly looks every inch the Hemingwayesque hunter, and it's not that big a stretch to imagine Gardner or Kelly in the clinches with him. Indeed, he and Grace Kelly had an offscreen affair during shooting, graying temples or not. --Robert Horton

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

It's Ava Gardner's World...and Everyone Else Just Lives in It:

Ava Gardner could hardly be considered anyone's second choice, but this is what director John Ford and screenwriter John Lee Mahin would have you believe in this overripe 1952 safari melodrama. Yet, she is the primary reason why this film is still worth a look 56 years later. Far more intuitively than Angelina Jolie these days, Gardner epitomized a primal sensuality and a hidden vulnerability, the combination of which was intoxicating in her prime. Ford captures this, as well as her dark beauty and sharp... more info

Magam, Bo??:

the magnificent Ava Gardner, with Gable and Kelly along for the ride, make this a delight.....not exactly Out of Africa in scope or style, it is 50's moviemaking at its best.....great Africa sights, an ok story, and the fabulous Ava will provide any but the dullest with memorable fun.......can't be helped deficit is lack of commentary tracks by stars and directors......strongly recommended to anyone over 18........

Mogambo DVD:

I saw this one in the theater when I was a little girl. I wasn't always sure what was happening (between the adults) but now that I do I can watch this one, easily, once a month. The story and the scenery in Africa are unsurpassed. The actors need no introduction to most viewers and the young ones who don't know them are in for a treat. This movie would be a fine, "How do you do".

Mogambo: