Snows of Kilimanjaro

Pros: African wildlife photography
Cons: script, editing, direction

Of late, I seem to be watching many impressively photographed but dull movies (...

Pros: Blockbuster hit movie
Cons: Many of Hayward's scenes were left on the cutting room floor.

Heminway's famous short story is brought to the screen in vivid technicolor with a cast of stars as big as the heavens. And that's the problem. Peck is too ambivalent in the part of Harry Street, a man dying beneath Kilimanjaro after an accident. His flashbacks on his life for the majority of the movie and this unfortunately is the most boring part and has nothing to do with Hemingway's story. Ava Gardner is completely miscast as a Susan Hayward double, the love of Street's life. Her death scene is jarringly hammy. Forget Hildegarde Neff--she's flat in a thankless role. Hayward fares better than her costars. Her neat little sarcastic comebacks to Peck's indifference gives her the edge and the last third or so of the movie she is given the opportunity to really act when she tries to save her loveless marriage and husband. Director Henry King actually supplied the voice of the hyena.