deng43 Review of The Snows of Kilimanjaro

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)

extraordinarily self-indulgent schlock

[5/10 · 28 August 2005]

if hemingway was really like this portrayal of him i have to wonder what i saw in his books as a young man. i am sure the makers wished to show him, as harry street, as a tormented man who, at the end of his days, lies questioning his life's direction, but they end up presenting the protagonist as a completely self-involved and puerile victim of testosterone o.d. whining his way thru a gangrenous fever. i can't believe this is the way hemingway thought of himself or wanted to be remembered. i always have some trouble with a film if i absolutely cannot identify with someone in it to some little degree. there was no one in this film to carry the load, no one that didn't strike me as so egocentrically self-involved and somehow wounded by 'fate' that i could even begin to feel a shred of empathy or understanding for them. the performances are wooden when not histrionic. i gave it a five because i did like the mountain.