The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)

Very best movie i ever watch

hyped garbage

Expected more

It’s not bad or unwatchable but despite the amplitude of the spectacle, the end result is underwhelming.

This is a movie that I remembered being bored by when I was dutifully sitting in a theatere at the age of 9. It was worth trying again at age 73. However it hasn't gotten better with time for me, even from a more mature perspective. This movie is very long and very boring, in spite of Harry Street's (Gregory Peck) uncle's (Leo G. Carroll) riddle. It would be interesting to know what Ernest Hemingway thought of this movie. The story seems a bit autobiographic, based on the memories (and locations) we are expected to endure as Harry Street lays in his bed with a badly infected leg (cause unknown)-- with buzzards flying overhead and hyenas laughing in the distance or stalking his tent at night--awaiting a plane to take him to a hospital. While watching this movie, one can't help but think that Hemingway (or at least Harry Street) was an egocentric maniac who measured his life out by the number of women he conquered, the number of things he did, the number of places he lived, and what a fine writer he was.

A man gets caught between Susan Hayward and Ava Gardner in this adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's novel by 20th Century Fox. There are, to be sure, greater problems in the world than having to choose between Miss Hayward and Miss Gardner. Though personally this writer thinks that Ava Gardner would win the coin toss each time in real life.Mr. Peck plays the Hemingway protagonist (a stand-in for Hemingway himself) with just the right combination of ease and dis-ease. There are some good outdoor hunting scenes, and through it all, Peck is perfectly groomed and dressed. Perhaps Cary Grant's tailor joined the hunting expedition.

I usually like old films and the title and cast of this one seemed a good bet. What a disappointment. Peck is grossly miscast - he's just not the gigolo he's portrayed, nor does he look like a man who's dying. Nor does 'Cynthia Green' convince me, even the name is too boring for the beautiful Ava Gardner. And the 'hunting' scene - sorry, standing in front of somebody else's adventure backdrop is again unconvincing as are the actual rhino shots, another time another place. The whole script is endlessly boring and I can't wait to get rid of it to the charity shop where I found it. And the 'Africans' - who are they kidding? 'What's he gonna do, sprinkle me with monkey dust?" Oh Lord, somebody please put him out of his misery and dismantle the set. The 'natives' did try to sound as though they'd learned their lines and that unconvincing chant with the luckless rhino head on a stretcher PULEASE! i don't know how painful gangrene is but Peck sure is bearing up well considering he only had his bandage changed but once and did he utter a sound when Hayward lanced the horrid green swelling? Nope, just looked his normal handsome self. Perhaps Humphrey Bogart might have managed this ponderously awful script better..but even he can't do miracles. The only one who deserved an Oscar was the hyena sniffing around the tent with a view to his next meal.

I'm ashamed to admit it, but I've never read Ernest Hemingway, I saw film adaptations, I'm familiar with Hemingway's tumultuous and adventurous life, his body of work, his monumental legacy on the field of literature, and it's out of respect to the writer, and to the Man, with a major M, that I start this review with a confession. If there is one thing I learned from Hemingway, and which "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" clearly states, is that no one should speak about what he doesn't know. I could use Wikipedia to establish some parallels between Gregory Peck's character as novelist Harry Street and Ernest Hemingway, about all the biographical elements of the story, but how could that ever replace the 'reading' experience?I've never been such a purist and if I had to read all the books before their adaptations, it would never end. But now, it fits both the author's and the film's spirits, which is that writing is not a profession, it's a condition, a choice a man makes to be the privileged witness of his world and sharing it with passion, understanding and humanism. You can call it 'existentialism', it might be even simpler than that, let's just call it honesty and sincerity. No one who hasn't faced the atrocities of war can ever write about death, no one who has ever lived an unfulfilled passion can write about love; no one who hasn't been jailed can write about freedom, no one who hasn't traveled around the world can ever give a universal dimension to his oeuvre. And when Harry decides to become a writer, the only encouragement he gets from his Uncle Bill (superbly portrayed by Leo G. Carroll) is a shotgun, to go hunting. It's only in hunting that a man can find the meanings of life and death, of danger and heroism, they don't mean anything special when you got them, but their lack is hugely insufferable. This is why 'Hunting' is what a writer's life should be in microcosm, a sort of quest to find a meaning that might never be given, a thirst to discover every place in the world, to challenge life and succumb to any of its temptations: drinks, women, lust without abandoning such male virtues as courage and responsibility, before finally extracting from experiences stories' raw material. And the film opens with Harry's voice-over exposing what is perhaps the greatest enigma of life: "Kilimanjaro is a snow-covered mountain 19,710 feet high, and is said to be the highest mountain in Africa. Close to the western summit there is the dried and frozen carcass of a leopard. No one has explained what the leopard was seeking at that altitude."Thankfully, we never get the explanation. The riddle is only a metaphor about finding our own truth, by reaching the ultimate limit of our efforts. And as the movie opens, we find Harris, suffering from a thorn prick, his infected leg attracting both vultures and hyenas. The disillusioned Harris, with his girlfriend Helen played by Susan Hayward, contemplates what seems to be a true failure, for his efforts never allowed him to become the accomplished writer he dreamed to be, the 'leopard in the summit'.For the sake of adventures, he abandoned the premise of family life with Cynthia Nixon, played by Ava Gardner in a performance all in sensitivity and emotion, contrasting with her adventurous and wisecracking attitude in "Mogambo". And after Cynthia, it's a cold but sexy European rich lady who introduced him to all the artistic European elite, anyway, Harris obviously lost his track and tried to find it out by reaching Cynthia who became an inaccessible Holy Grail, replacing an unclear dream, but ironically guiding him to a perilous trip during Spain's Civil War, before meeting Helen in Paris, the setting of his romance with Cynthia.Peck's performance is wooden and deliberately cynical, like a man who doesn't think much of himself, but it succeeds in embodying the tragedy of someone who never exactly knew himself, where he stood for, and perhaps, that is the worst failure an adventurer writer can ever make: becoming an intellectual malcontent. On his deathbed, his Uncle doesn't talk much about hunting but rather leaves him the Kilimanjaro riddle, implicitly acknowledging that it's up to each one of us to meet with our destiny, and to understand our world, according to our own sensitivity. "The Snows of Kilimandjaro" raise very important question that might hit sensitive chords in the hearts of wannabe artists, but it also helps to embrace life in a more mature way, what is it that we seek: success? money? Harris got them but he lost self-respect. Love and passion? Sometimes, they can undermine the very road to destiny, but lacking them is even worse. We all have to find out the remedy of our own existential malaise and pray for that they wouldn't be worse than the evil.On a more personal level, I learned from the film that only experience forges conscience and only conscience can guide the words the closest to truth. I love to write, but I never wrote anything significant in my life, however, I've never wrote as well as when I narrated my trip to the Toubkal, which is the second highest mountain in Africa. I could describe the effect the wind had on my eyes, the sensation of feet being mired into the freezing snow, and the exhilaration of being on the top of the mountain. I could because I lived it, and no one could get that experience off me.And oddly enough it was before I ever knew about that riddle, that I concluded the story with a quote from another significant author of XXthe century, Khalil Jibran who seemed to have his own answer to the Kilmanjaro riddle… and to life."…when you have reached the mountain top, then you shall begin to climb"