THE SNOWS OF KILIMANJARO (1952) ** No great writer has been more regularly and thoroughly savaged by Hollywood than Ernest Hemingway. I can't tell you why this is, but I can give you some clues: No one should have ever cast Ava Gardner in a film of any literary interest, or anywhere else. Gregory Peck is so hopelessly miscast as the macho pseudo-biographical Hemingway that he leaves the viewer no choice but to perceive him as Truman Capote so erroneously considered the great man: a blathering and bombastic buffoon wading and waddling through melodrama and injuring animals to compensate for some misplaced aspect of manhood. So Peck's even worse than Gardner (I can't believe it either), and neither of them get anywhere near the depths attained and sustained by Susan Hayward. The single worst aspect of the production, however, has to be music that could only be appropriate in the devil's personal elevator. So why isn't the film even worse? Part of the short answer is that it is, that poignant scenes are laughable if not as laughable as presumably sane people putting down real money to have this made and others taking time to watch it. Mea culpa . But there are other parts, too. Yeah, Peck looks like an idiot when he blurts out poignant and learned insights (that Hemingway's taken pages to set up) the second he sits down at a bar and then they promptly move him out to the next greatest hit, but.well, if nothing else it's impressive that they had the determination to carry on. And they do, all of them, Hayward too, and. A thing about Hemingway is that even though he's a spectacular stylist, he tells a good story. A story that anyone should be able to tell. It's not his fault that Hollywood sees the big issues and busts out the romance novel theatrics and production values. It's not Hollywood's fault either, well it is but at least they know that there's something there and they're trying to somehow reflect some part of it that they recognize. So it could have been worse? I didn't say that, but.yeah, I think so, maybe.
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