The Snows of Kilimanjaro
Starring: Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Susan Hayward
Director: Henry King
The film: The main problem filmmakers usually have with adapting literary works for the screen is the condensing of a book into a couple of hours of script and scenario. For The Snows of Kilimanjaro, the opposite was the case. Ernest Hemingway's short story of the same name, originally published in Esquire magazine in 1936, was much too short for a full-length screenplay, and so director Henry King (Love is a Many Splendored Thing) and screenwriter Casey Robinson (Passage to Marseille) padded it out with episodes from other works by the writer. These included For Whom the Bell Tolls, The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms.
Hemingway disliked the film for this and other reasons (a change in the ending was one), but it was among the most popular releases of its year and a top-five box office earner for 1952.
Gregory Peck (right with Ava Gardner) plays Harry Street, a disillusioned writer, laid up and drinking heavily in the shadow of Mount Kilimanjaro as he endures the pain of a badly infected leg wound. Nursed by girlfriend Susan Hayward, he drifts in and out of consciousness, recalling scenes from his life in Paris, Africa and Spain. Flashbacks are given colour by some excellent location filming (especially in Paris), but neither Peck nor any of his co-stars appear anywhere other than in front of back-screened studio sets. This brings an artificial tone to the film, and is perhaps its main weakness.