'African Queen' finally sails again

It's been a long, strange journey for "The African Queen."

In 1998, when DVD was in its infancy, the American Film Institute hailed the classic 1951 production as one of the 100 greatest American films. But only now is it finally coming out in DVD format -- the last of the original AFI 100 to do so -- as well as on Blu-ray.

It took only six years and work on three continents to make it happen.

Directed by maverick filmmaker John Huston, "The African Queen" stars Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart, in the only role for which he won an Oscar. He plays Charlie Allnut, the rough captain of the titular boat who comes to the rescue of Hepburn's no-nonsense missionary character, Rose Sayer, after the Germans attack her African village during World War I.

Driven by her single-minded plan for revenge, they make a long, difficult journey down a wild river to attack a German gunboat. Along the way, the unlikely companions fall in love.

When we hear of old films taking an arduous path to home video, it's usually because their surviving elements are in poor physical condition. But the delay for "The African Queen" stems from its origins as an independent film made outside the Hollywood studio system. As a result, the original three-strip Technicolor negatives have always been held by one of its foreign producers, British-based Romulus Films.

So even though U.S.-based Paramount Home Entertainment owns the rights to distribute the film in the Western Hemisphere, it never has had the actual film in its possession.

As Ron Smith, vice president of restoration at Paramount, explained: "The negatives were actually scanned in the U.K. and then sent digitally via a secure server to our facility that did the restoration work in Burbank. ... So we never did actually touch the film."

Once in Southern California, the three strips -- magenta, cyan, yellow -- were recombined digitally. Frame after frame was calibrated individually by hand. Cleanup tasks -- removing dirt, hair and other artifacts -- were shared virtually with the esteemed Prasad Group in India.

"It was really a multicultural event," Smith said.

That's fitting for a film that added another continent to the mix, Africa, where it really was shot.

"At the time, that was not the usual way to go about filming," said Theodore Bikel, who played the German first officer and, at 85, is the only surviving member of the cast. "John Huston ... went to where it was -- with the leeches, the insects, the wildlife and all of that."

Smith said he has watched the film 40 to 50 times during the restoration but hasn't tired of it.

"It doesn't dull at all with age or with repeated viewings," he said. "I just think it's some of their greatest work. John Huston knew what he was doing with what he had."

Bikel said he was excited for the generations of viewers who will be discovering "The African Queen" for the first time on DVD or Blu-ray.

"It was brilliantly filmed, brilliantly conceived," he said. "It's rare that you get to watch a film that is a classic and that was made by a master director, which is what John Huston was, with such extraordinary talents as Hepburn and Bogart."