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SPOILERSAn expansion of a Hemingway short story with bits of some other stories and his life thrown in, The Snows Of Kilimanjaro is a badly flawed film, but the basic idea of a dying man trying to figure out if his life had any meaning to it is surprisingly deep, and the sometimes stiff Gregory Peck gives a superb performance in a role that required a full range of emotions.
As Peck's Hemingway-in-all-but-name lies dying in Africa remembering his life and loves, there are a few sections which drag [such as the scenes with his father] but some which work very well, especially most of the scenes with Ava Gardner's Cynthia, the love of his life,and the early ones with Susan Hayward, who is a kind of redemption for him. What really seriously weakens the film is the framing African scenes. The mixture of studio and real African scenery is clumsily done and the last 20 mins of the film are oddly dull. The [possibly studio imposed]happy ending is also poor- the film would have been much better and quite moving if, having come to terms with his life and realizing he actually really loves his wife,he had than died. Cuts severely reduced Hayward's role in the film, to it's detriment.
Still, there are a few striking scenes [such as a drunken Peck encountering Hayward on a Paris bridge, or Gardner's moving death], there is some lovely cinematography and the score by Bernard Herrmann includes one particular theme which is one of the beautiful ever written for a film. The film never really becomes as good as one feels it ought to be considering some of the elements in it. Not at all a bad film, but a very uneven one.
score /10
DrLenera 11 October 2004
Reprint: https://www.imdb.com/review/rw0946014/ |
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28-2-2021 00:05:17