Vashirdfel Simply A Masterpiece

Tayloriona Although I seem to have had higher expectations than I thought, the movie is super entertaining.

Mandeep Tyson The acting in this movie is really good.

Fleur Actress is magnificent and exudes a hypnotic screen presence in this affecting drama.

dbkenner-73304 Maisie is Maisie. Always enjoyable, but never rising to the level of series like The Thin Man. I like them as much as Blondie and a little better than Torchy. If you liked the first one you can certainly bask in this mix of seriousness and silliness.Typically, some people are upset that the African characters are not all depicted as surgeons or poets. Oddly, these guardians of the film world end up minimizing the contributions of the black actors and the importance of the African characters (e.g., Everett Brown as Jallah). Third World riots aren't pretty (they share this quality with First World riots). Hollywood would film it different today, but they'd also ruin the movie with politics. To enjoy old movies we have to accept that things were different then. My rating (7/10) is measuring Congo Maisie against other movies in the series and against other series movies of the same type.

dougdoepke Since it's a Maisie, I was expecting more of a comedy. But the laughs, such as they are, are secondary to a rather dramatic plot. Due to a series of mishaps, our girl ends up in a medical research station in darkest Africa. There she mingles with a strapping fellow refugee (Carroll), along with the current research doctor (Strudwick) and his classy wife (Johnson). In the background lurks a restive native tribe and their jealous witch doctors. Naturally, emotions wander while the natives grow more restless.Sothern's brassy persona remains intact but with many more dramatic moments than usual for the series. And that's despite a really clever opening. Looks to me like the studio was still unsure of the series direction. Not so with the handsome Carroll, who's clearly a Clark Gable hopeful in both voice and manner, and getting a lot of screen time, to boot. Fortunately, Maisie gets some snappy lines, along with the movie's highlight where she out-performs the witch doctors with a magic act. And catch her slinky outfit that's a real eye-catcher. Too bad for Rita Johnson's rather dour and dowdy role as the neglected wife.All in all, it's a well-mounted B-picture whose sets and effects reflect MGM's concern with quality. Nevertheless, the 71-minutes largely fails to show off Maisie's street-wise comedic appeal to best effect. The series would soon find a surer footing for that appeal.

bkoganbing MGM's Tarzan sets got some extra use when in Ann Sothern's Maisie series she did an African film Congo Maisie. The plot which was recycled from Red Dust would get recycled again for Mogambo only that one was actually done on African location.Ann Sothern stows away on the wrong boat, she has a job in a coastal African town, but this boat commanded by J.M. Kerrigan is going upstream to a small settlement, a research facility where married couple Sheppard Strudwick and Rita Johnson. Even further into the wild is another former doctor now rubber plantation magnate John Carroll and all three go visiting there.Where both an outbreak of witch doctor fundamentalism and an attack of appendicitis on Strudwick puts the whole party in jeopardy. But not with the ever resourceful Maisie using some tricks she learned from when she was a magician's apprentice.Using her Maisie character as a bridge between what Jean Harlow and later Ava Gardner did with same part, Sothern is light, breezy, entertaining and very wise in a street smart way. The Maisie series went on for about a decade and Sothern's ingratiating and affable personality was the reason why. We could all use a wise Maisie in our lives.

Greenster Quick-witted, fast-talking, wise-cracking and often penniless, Miss Mary Anastasia O'Connor undauntedly takes her nightclub act on the road--usually the very long road--persevering, and performing by the stage name of Maisie Ravier.Chapter Two of the resulting ten-film series bearing her name, and recounting her saga, finds her itinerary set in the wilderness of the Congo, hence "Congo Maisie" (MGM 1940).While much of its cast (including J.M. Kerrigan, E.E. Clive, Everett Brown, Tom Fadden, Lionel Pape and Nathan Curry) appears in its story's periphery, the lion's share of this jungle tale concentrates upon its second leads (Rita Johnson, as Kay McWade, and Shepperd Strudwick, as Doctor John 'Jock' McWade), its leading man (John Carroll, as Doctor Michael Shane) and, especially, its ever-lovely leading lady (Ann Sothern, as Maisie Ravier).This time around, Maisie books her nightclub act at a remote village up river from a western African port. Again impoverished, she cleverly stows away upon a river barge to attempt to reach her destination but is soon discovered by its renter, Doctor Shane (John Carroll).Evicted from his quarters, but remaining on board, she pawns trinkets for morsels of breakfast, about which time it is learned that the barge must dock for several days because of rising waters.Stranded from the raft, Doctor Shane reluctantly "rescues" Maisie, by inviting her to accompany him on a three- or four-mile hike through the uninviting wilderness to the nearby fortified medical research station, which he once managed.Here, Maisie is welcomed by its current operators, Kay and Doctor John McWade (the pretty Rita Johnson and the kind and gentlemanly Shepperd Strudwick). Miss Johnson is often cast as a "foresaken first wife" or "a possessive and haughty other woman." Here, she combines the types in gentle fashion, forlorn from her station in life, and seeking the advances of a handsome suitor.And Maisie, with her present bag of resources and presence-of-mind perception to figure the score, suddenly finds herself with her hands full, facing the breaking down of her hosts' marriage, a patient in need of emergency surgery, treacherous weather conditions, an impending attack on the fort by tribal natives, simultaneously, while trying to resolve her feud and feelings for Doctor Shane, before the raft sets sail again.