Even Hemingway Hated It!

A Lesser Product From the Best Ingredients

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952) – On safari in Africa, a writer reflects on the missed chances while recovering from a hunting injury.  His pursuit of adventure has cost him a lot.  Is it about to cost him his life as well? Based on a short story by Ernest Hemingway.

Directed by Henry King

Starring Gregory Peck, Susan Hayward, Ava Gardner

Why I Liked It – It’s a good reminder that even great stories and great casts can turn into lesser movies.

This one is going to get me into trouble right off the bat this year.  “The Snows of Kilimanjaro” was one of the most successful movies at the box office of 1952 (third overall).  It starred big-name stars, and its source material was from one of the most famous American authors of the 20th century.  Heck, Rotten Tomatoes shows it with an 75% critics rating.

And it’s just so… not good.

I mean, even Hemingway hated it.  He felt the screenwriters stitched together too many pieces from too many other parts of his writing.  And you know what?  I agree with the great man.  There’s a quote from The Lord of the Rings where Bilbo is talking about the effect of the One Ring on him:

“I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.”

 That is the exact feeling I felt through all 117 minutes of this movie.  Too much of what made it onto the screen felt like filler.  Taking a short story as the source for a full-length movie is a challenge.  The writers need a solid vision of where the story is going to grow to fill in the time.  Here, they fill time with stock footage of African wildlife inserted behind the actors filmed on a studio lot in California.  The effect looks terrible to today’s audiences, but would have been acceptable at the time.  It’s not the technology that’s an issue here, it’s the lack of an interesting story.

It’s not helped by the whipsaw effect of the structure of the movie.  Hemingway tells the story this way on the page, but it’s only a short story. Almost two hours of bouncing back and forth from then to now, Africa, America, Africa, Paris, Africa, Africa (as both then AND now), Spain, endlessly. 

At this point, I need to address the cast.  Peck, Hayward and Gardner all knew how to grab audiences.  The women do fine (although Gardner has one awful exit), but it’s Peck that lets everything down.  Given my profound respect for the actor, it’s hard to force my fingers to type the words.  He is utterly, utterly miscast here.  Harry Street is a classic Hemingway character, in that he resembles the author so closely.  Filled to overflowing with a vital, yet self-destructive life force, Street is running from a company of internal demons.  He drinks, he takes absurd risks, attracts women like moths to a flame and burns everyone who cares about him.  Street’s epiphany is confronting just what a shallow jerk he has been.

So naturally, you cast an actor known for thoughtful, deep, emotionally connected characters.  This role is as far from Atticus Finch as it may be possible to be.  It’s not that Peck doesn’t give it a good effort, but too often it looks like he’s flailing in the attempt to get a grip on the character.  There were plenty of opinions at the time that thought this was a bad too. It’s not often that I watch a Peck role and think “Can’t you just die, please?”

With all of that said, it’s not the WORST movie I’ve seen over the last several years.  There are parts of the story that are interesting, even if they are never woven into a cohesive larger narrative.  Not all “classics” age well.

Rating – ** Not Impressed