8/10
A big popular star film of its time...
6 September 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Gregory Peck plays Harry Street, a famous American writer, who lies dangerously ill in a hunting camp at the foot of the highest peak in Africa, Tanzania's Mount Kilimanjaro... His lovely companion Susan Hayward, who had arranged this hunting trip in the hopes of winning his love, takes care of him faithfully and prays for his recover... Peck, surrounded by vultures in the trees, is semi delirious and fears that he's going to die from an infected wound...

His feverish mind goes back to his youth... He recalls his uncle Bill (Leo G. Carrell), who guided his life in those early years, Connie (Helene Stanley), the first girl he was interested in, and his travels around the world in search for something he never seemed to discover...

We see him entering a charming bistro in Montparnasse, Paris, where he first meets the beautiful (Cynthia) Ava Gardner... Inspired by her love, he writes his first novel, making her the central character without conscious planning...

'Snows of Kilimanjaro' is Hayward's third movie with director Henry King, and her second with Peck after "David and Bathsheba." Hayward and Peck's scenes at the foot of Kilimanjaro are constantly interrupted by flashbacks and this, plus the fact that most of their sequences in France were left on the cutting room floor, made Hayward's part sort of 'evaporate' from everybody's mind… However, she does have strong dramatic scenes at the end of the movie… Ava Gardner appeared as the ideal Hemingway heroine…

The film celebrated the mastery of Benny Carter—one of the most important and influential musician in the history of jazz, and got two Oscar nominations for Art Direction/Set Decoration and Cinematography
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