Whilst I like to think myself generally well read, I have to confess to there being some very sizeable gaps in my knowledge of literature. I am in my element talking about Dickens, Austen, Chaucer or Hardy but F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway are a different matter. To my shame I have never got around to familiarising myself with the works of “The Lost Generation” - the works of the great American writers based in Paris in the aftermath of the first world war.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro is based on a short story by Hemingway and tells the story of an American writer, who falls into a fever after being wounded and reflects on his failures both at love and in his writing. His neglected wife takes care for him as he slips into delirium, trying to keep him alive long enough for a plane to arrive to rescue them. In doing so she must listen to him talking of lost loves and prevent him from destroying himself or giving in to his sickness.
The film opens with writer Harry Street already injured, teasing us with two conflicting accounts of how he was injured. Harry argues that his skin was broken by a thorn in a bizarre twist of fate and that led to his leg becoming infected; his wife says he injured it when saving a young man who had fallen in a fast-moving river.
Screenwriter Casey Robinson establishes in this early scene each character’s view of Street - Harry sees himself as unlucky and with self-pity, his wife thinks of him as heroic and capable. As the film plays out we learn more about these characters and their relationship, although it is far more interested in Harry’s story than Helen’s.
Feverishly Harry’s mind races back to growing up in rural Michigan, breaking up with his girlfriend and running away to Europe where he encounters the striking Cynthia Green. As their romance develops, so does his writing. On a safari trip to Africa, Cynthia falls pregnant and, with their relationship at an end, Harry’s life spirals into turmoil. He remembers another failed relationship before meeting Helen, mistaking her for Cynthia not once but twice.
These short flashbacks vary in interest and quality with the strongest being those centred on Harry and Cynthia, first in Africa and then Spain. Ava Gardner is superb as the playgirl who is challenged by the discovery that she is pregnant, realising that she does not want the same things from life that Harry does. In one scene she tries to tell him that their life will change, hoping that he will respond to the prospect of a new life with a family. The look on her face when he replies is heartbreaking and we know that their romance will be at an end.
Gregory Peck’s easy charm as Harry perhaps feels a little out of character, yet it does help to explain why women would be interested in a man that bad-tempered and cruel. He handles the sarcastic dialogue well, though at times it seems as if the film would have been better served by someone with a more severe, cutting edge in their performance.
Susan Hayward, as his wife Helen, is anonymous for large chunks of the narrative as the script requires her to mop Harry’s brow and be patient with him. Only towards the end of the picture is she really tested as an actress as Harry’s sickness worsens and she is required to treat the infection on his leg herself.
The scenes between Helen and Harry take place, for the most part, on what is clearly a soundstage recreation of a camp in an African clearing. Camera movement feels restricted at points, particularly when compared with some of the often spectacular second camera crew work that was done on location in Egypt and Kenya.
Director Henry King mostly intercuts between the soundstage material and location footage, doing an acceptable job of marrying the two together although the joins are noticeable. However there is no excusing a sequence on a lake featuring some of the worst back projection I have ever witnessed. I always try to bear in mind the technical limitations of the period when looking at an older film but the poor execution of these shots ruins what ought to have been one of the most tense sequences of the picture.
His work elsewhere in the picture however is solid and he uses the camera and lighting well to signify a mood of nostalgia and then melancholy. Sound is used well to give the film a haunting, unnerving texture, the sound of animals in the distance giving the film a real sense of place.
The Snows of Kilimanjaro is not a film that has stood up particularly well to the tests of time. It is hard to overlook its bizarre mesh of stylised, staged dialogue scenes and wildlife footage shot on location or the film’s often slow pacing. Yet for all its faults the film still is affecting and, at moments, moving.