That was an excellent one.

In truth, there is barely enough story here to make a film.

Great example of an old-fashioned, pure-at-heart escapist event movie that doesn't pretend to be anything that it's not and has boat loads of fun being its own ludicrous self.

The biggest problem with this movie is it’s a little better than you think it might be, which somehow makes it worse. As in, it takes itself a bit too seriously, which makes most of the movie feel kind of dull.

Producer: Darryl F. Zanuck. Copyright 17 September 1952 by 20th Century-Fox Film Corp. New York opening at the Rivoli: 18 September 1952. U.S. release: July 1953 (sic). U.K. release: 2 February 1953. Australian release: 18 December 1952. Sydney Opening at the Regent. 114 minutes. SYNOPSIS: Harry Street, an amazingly successful novelist, is near death at the foot of Kilimanjaro. Reviewing his life, particularly his thwarted romances with Cynthia and Liz, he decides to mend his ways, settle down with his third love, Helen, and even write something worthwhile.NOTES: Nominated for Academy Awards for Color Cinematography (won by The Quiet Man), and Color Art Direction (won by Moulin Rouge).Aided by a lavishly mounted publicity campaign which stressed the non-existent salacious qualities of the tedious script, the movie came in 3rd at the domestic box-office with a gross rentals take of $6½ million.Number 5 on the National Board of Review's American Ten Best of 1952. Best Actress of 1952, Susan Hayward (principally for her acting in With a Song In My Heart, but her performance in this one also influenced the voters) - Photoplay Gold Medal Award.COMMENT: Casey Robinson has reduced Hemingway to a wordy, sluggishly paced bore, hammily acted by Susan Hayward who is absolutely ridiculous as the distraught wife. Peck is likewise totally unbelievable and the other players are forced into an unequal struggle with their impossible characters. Leon Shamroy has tried to give the film a bit of atmospheric sheen and gloss (indeed the lighting is the film's best feature) but the plodding music score and Henry King's elephantine direction do not help. A bit of location footage (the stars stay firmly in the studio) helps but generally this is an overlong, long-winded, and decidedly dull disappointment.

If you have read the Hemingway story you will be disappointed, because this is - surprise! :-) - the Hollywood version of the story (much more simple and shallow and simple) with an altogether different ending. Also, the movie-makers have taken material from other Hemingway stories - about other characters - and mixed with the Kilimanjaro story. Still, it retains something of Hemingway as well.Gregory Peck is handsome as ever, and Ava Gardner is gorgeous as ever. The scenes from Africa are also unusually realistic for the time. One can see that not all of it is shot in a studio.As a woman, I can also relate very much to Ava Gardner's character. She wanted so much to have a child, to have something to hold onto in the world. But when the child she was carrying would have come between her and her lover - or this was what she feared - as it did not fit in with his life plan at that time, she got rid of it, masking the abortion as an accident. Very many women all through the ages, have been in the same situation. And very many men have had it on their conscience.

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"

This was a big and colorful movie made for us by Darryl Zanuck and Henry King; two of the best. It was made just prior to CinemaScope and it still surprises me to see it isn't wide screen. The trouble is that the movie had suffered severely from poor preservation, and much of the excellent camera work on location in Africa suffers badly from neglect. So also the sound track is not good. Try to find this in VHS. Why the DVD wasn't made from a quality VHS is anyone's guess.Since 1952 I've read all of Hemingway's books. 100%; no kidding. Even his collected letters at 1000+ pages. I'd call this a very good Hemingway movie. Enough has been said by other reviewers.