Mogambo

Mogambo is a 1953 American film directed by John Ford and starring Clark Gable, Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly as lead actors.

It is an adaptation of the 1932 film Red Dust, based on a 1931 play of the same name written by Wilson Collison (1893 - 1945). The movie Red Dust had been directed by Victor Fleming, and had featured Clark Gable himself and Jean Harlow incarnating the protagonists.

Mogambo was nominated for two Oscars: Best Lead Actress (Ava Gardner) and Best Supporting Actress (Grace Kelly).

Title

Mogambo is a word that means nothing in any African language; it came up with producer Sam Zimbalist because of its resemblance to a Spanish-American nightclub in Hollywood, the Mocambo, though he claimed it meant "the biggest."

Synopsis

Vic Marswell (Clark Gable) is a professional beast hunter who, along with an English hunting partner, John Brown-Pryce (Philip Stainton), known as "Brownie", sets traps to capture animals for the zoos; They also organize game drives. In her small hotel on the river bank, where she has the rude and hostile Russian Leon Boltchak as her employee, she has met by chance for some time (she has been summoned and dumped by a convenience boyfriend) the attractive < New York socialite Eloise Kelly (Ava Gardner), known as "Honey Bear", with whom Marswell ends up starting a relationship that pretends to be inconsequential.

A married couple from the United States arrive who have hired Marswell's services to film gorillas in the wild. Husband Donald Nordley (Donald Sinden) falls ill and, during his recovery, his wife Linda (Grace Kelly) is impressed by the mature hunter and falls head over heels for him. In turn, Marswell is flattered and believes he is also in love with her. Eloise Kelly views this situation with jealousy, pain and disbelief, and she embarks on a river steamer to return to America, but the situation in the country forces the boat to return. Marswel refuses to be the cause of the marriage's breakdown, but the affair is made public when Linda fires a gun; then Kelly in a moment of kindness, saves Linda's honor and holds Marswell responsible. It seems that the relations between the two couples are going to break inevitably...

Reception

The film was a success: with a budget of $3.1 million, it grossed $8.3 million, and its actresses Ava Gardner and Grace Kelly received Academy Award nominations and the latter won the Golden Globe, and the film was nominated for best film at the BAFTAs. Thanks to the seductive role of Ava Gardner in this film about hunters and beasts, she came to be popularly called "the most beautiful animal in the world".

Spain

In the 1953 Spanish dubbing, Franco's censorship code made the film's dialogues awkwardly change to avoid adultery in the plot, thus turning the characters of Grace Kelly and Donald Sinden into brothers in instead of marriage, thus causing something worse against their will: an incest. For this reason, a bedroom scene in which only a bed was present had to be suppressed.

This distortion did not occur in Latin American countries, where American films were not presented dubbed, but with the original soundtrack and subtitles.

Argentina

In Argentina, this film has given rise to the nickname "gorillas", a disqualifying term that Peronism used to designate its opponents and that later became generalized among anti-Peronists. It happens that, around 1955, when the local premiere of Mogambo, parodies of films were made in a humorous program on the radio: La Revista Dislocada. In the corresponding parody, a character repeated continuously, with a Buenos Aires accent, the phrase from the film, "It must be the gorillas, they must be...". In circles of military and civilians who conspired against the first government of General Perón, this phrase was attributed to government officials, who supposedly uttered it before each suspected act of attack that occurred in those days. Among the revolutionaries, those with the most anti-Peronist political ideology, proudly claimed for themselves the nickname "gorillas." During the 1970s, the montoneros called right-wing Peronist trade unionists gorillas (What's wrong, general, the popular government is full of gorillas?).

Historical assessment

The historical setting in the film is not a priority, but it must be contextualized within a process of decolonization of the African continent. It is located in the current country of Kenya, where the Mau Mau rebellion was taking place at that time. The technical team had to be surrounded by a special guard, and even so, two Mau Mau infiltrated. They would achieve independence in 1960, years later, and, although this rebellion failed, it is believed that it was the incentive to achieve their independence.

The film is clearly told from a Western perspective, the main characters, and who really add something to the plot, are all white. African people are simply workers under the orders of hunters. We're shown hardly anything about their culture, the only time we're shown anything is when they put Vic through the "valor test." The existence of this custom is of disputed veracity, and offers a primitive and savage image of the Kikuyu natives. But authentic indigenous ethnic music recorded in the Congo is played.

The only moment in which the Africans gain any prominence is in the scene in which they rebel against the settlers and later expel the group of hunters that arrives in their territory. This scene is also one of the few where we are shown what is happening in Kenya at that time. We can see that there are already certain local groups that reject colonialism and rebel against the presence and control of the British. These feelings will lead to a bloody guerrilla war against the British (1952-1959) and the independence of Kenya in 1963.

It was not an easy shoot; Ava Gardner fell ill with dysentery and had to be flown to England; when she recovered she returned; three members of the technical team died in traffic accidents due to bad roads. Although Zimbalist had already located the locations the year before, a shooting location had to be changed because the Mau Mau found out where it was taking place and were planning to kill Clark Gable, et cetera.

Awards and nominations