Classification:

In 1932, Clark Gable made a picture for MGM called Red Dust, and very steamy it was, too. A story of lust set in the jungles of south-east Asia, it featured Gable as a rubber planter choosing between temptress Jean Harlow and demure Mary Astor. Mogambo, directed by John Ford, is the remake, transposed to Africa.

Gable is the great white hunter leading the party. Ava Gardner is the girl on the prowl for a man, and who has now settled on Gable. To get him she has to offset the sweeter charms of Grace Kelly, the wife, who also has become smitten with the Gable masculinity and is ready to walk-out on Donald Sinden, the unexciting anthropologist.

John Lee's Mahin's dialogue is quite good. Gardner feeding a baby rhino and elephant, and her petulant storming at a pet boa constrictor, are good touches.

The steaminess of the original is gone, but: this is still an enjoyable Technicolor adventure romp fit for the postwar Eisenhower era of healthy living, with a supporting cast of monkeys, lions, elephants and rhinos. Freddie Young shot the African exteriors; Robert Surtees did the interiors in Hollywood.

For only the second time in Metro history up to that date, they made a pricture without a music score (King Soloman's Mines was the first).