Snows Of Kilimanjaro, The (1952)

Darryl F. Zanuck’s adaptation of The Snows of Kilimanjaro is a rather generic early '50s Hollywood production, big on exotic locations shot in gaudy Technicolor (the foothills of Kilimanjaro, Paris, Madrid and the Riveria all feature), pasteboard studio sets and dodgy back-projection, that takes Ernest Hemingway’s story of a life seen by its protagonist as wasted and gives it a happy ending (in the novel he dies, in the film he is reprieved and redeemed).

Gregory Peck is miscast as successful writer, Harry Street, who we first meet lying on a cot in the African bush dying of an infected leg and attended by his wife Helen (Susan Hayward).  Feeling sorry for himself he remembers his life and in particular the love of his life Cynthia Green (Ava Gardner).

As adapted by writer Casey Robinson and director Henry King, the film boils down to an illustrated history of Harry’s love life: the first girlfriend (Helene Stanley), the great love lost (Gardner), the affair of the flesh ((Hildegard Knef) and finally the devoted wife (Hayward), peppered with manly exploits like big game hunting, fighting in the Spanish Civil war. Intermittently the film reverts to Harry on his cot banging on about what a failure as an artist he is (apparently Hemingway based the character on F. Scott Fitzgerald). As played by the handsomely recumbent Peck he might as well be worried about having the wrong coloured socks on.

The film only comes alive when Gardner is onscreen. Whether she’s playing sultry in an Parisian boîte (albeit more 1950s than 30s) or lying crushed under a Red Cross ambulance she looks fabulous and the camera loves her much as it had the previous year in Pandora and the Flying Dutchman. Unfortunately she disappears from the film and is replaced by Susan Hayward’sstereotypical character of dutiful “second best” wife.  Had the film been called “The Sexual Frustrations of Harry Street” (King comes up with splendid erotic symbol using cigarettes) it might have been less disappointing.

Bernard Herrmann's score is one of the best things about this typically unsatisfactory adaptation of the iconic author’s work.

FYI:: Ava Gardner would play a similar role in another Hemingway adaptation, also directed by Henry King, The Sun Also Rises (1957).

 

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