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As the first wife, Celia (Brief Encounter) Johnson is comfy mediocrity to the life; she is an impeccable actress who finds the center of human dignity in every role she plays, and from it moves out into comedy or tragedy with equal ease and grace. As wife No. 2, Yvonne de Carlo does the job of her life. For the first time a director (Anthony Kimmins) has understood that her exuberant wiggles, suggestive ogles and painted sneer of sexual overconfidence need only the least exaggeration to change a glamour girl into a raucously earthy figure of fun.
Mogambo (MGM) is jampacked with Technicolor shots of such splendid animals as lions, leopards, gazelles and Ava Gardner. The curator of this photogenic zoo is Clark Gable, pictured as a tough, conscienceless "white hunter" who suffers a predictable attack of morality as the movie ends. Filmed in Africa, Mogambo borrowed its plot from the 21-year-old Red Dust (which also starred Gable, with the late Jean Harlow playing the Ava Gardner role). The dialogue seems to date back to an even earlier era than the original film.
Actress Gardner, cast as a sort of one-girl Friendship Club, arrives at Gable's African animal farm to keep a date with a maharaja. When she finds that her potentate has gone back to the Punjab, Ava companionably moves in with Gable, only to have her idyl interrupted by the arrival of a British anthropologist (Donald Sinden) and his aristocratic, susceptible wife (Grace Kelly). On safari, the camera keeps one travelogue eye on natives, chest-thumping gorillas and the lush African landscape, but concentrates mainly on a heavy-breathing triangle involving Ava, Gable and Grace. After 116 minutes, the characters are sorted out again so that Ava gets Gable and Actress Kelly, chastened and repentant, goes back to her simple-minded husband.
Gable plays his he-man part with the bemused ease to be expected of a man who has done the same thing many times before; Grace Kelly's blonde beauty remains intact despite the remarkably silly lines she is made to say, and Ava romps delightfully with baby elephants and giraffes in the intervals between her pursuit of Gable.