Hatari! (1962)

What director Howard Hawks did for South American mail plane pilots in 1939’s Only Angels Have Wings, he does here for a mismatched band of professional big game catchers – capturing wild animals for export to zoos around the world – and their women in this virtually plotless but energetic safari comedy-adventure, shot in Tanganyika, Africa (now Tanzania).

There are only two women at the camp to seven men, and Sean Mercer (John Wayne) – who doesn’t believe in mixing romance with business – is slow to catch on that Dallas (Elsa Martinelli) is pining for him.

And while Frenchman Chips Maurey (Gérard Blain) and German Kurt Muller (Hardy Kruger) have to be stopped from coming to blows over Brandy de la Court (Michèle Girardon), Pockets (Red Buttons) – who is shy but not reticent – waits for his chance to move in and take over.

The bulk of the picture simply alternates the daily adventures of the animal hunters with their nightly relaxations: bouts of horseplay, a little love-making, and lots of food and drink.

These laconic moments are the background to the day’s main task – the capture of African animals, and here, the camera attains a virtuosity unequalled in filmed fiction or fact. Speeding along beside animals in amazing tracking shots, which are an eternal credit to photographer Russell Harlan, the picture gives a breath-taking close-up of what it is like to trap giraffes and enraged rhinos bounce like battering rams into speeding Land Rovers.

But it’s not all furious action. There is an incredible sequence where Red Buttons traps a whole herd of monkeys with a flying net, which the magic of director Hawks makes entirely credible. The stars are inevitably upstaged, though, by a trio of baby elephants and Henry Mancini’s perky score.

“Hatari” is the Swahili word for “danger”.

Sean Mercer
John Wayne
Anna Maria ‘Dallas’ D’Allesandro
Elsa Martinelli
Kurt Muller
Hardy Kruger
Pockets
Red Buttons
Charles ‘Chips’ Maurey
Gérard Blain
Little Wolf
Bruce Cabot
Brandy de la Court
Michèle Girardon
Luis Francisco Garcia Lopez
Valentin de Vargas
Dr Sanderson
Eduard Franz

Director
Howard Hawks

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