The Snows of Kilimanjaro

"The Snows Of Kilimanjaro is one of those odd major studio titles that few of us have ever seen properly, mostly because its original copyright was allowed to lapse in 1970 -- at the outset of the 1980's, the movie started turning up in ever-more-degraded ""public domain"" editions on public television and UHF stations, and later on low-level cable channels. It receded somewhat as the owners asserted the underlying copyright protection from the original Ernest Hemingway story, but it's been decades since the movie has been seen in anything resembling a decent looking image; the movie never even made it to VHS or laserdisc from Fox. The studio has nade up for it with this DVD, which restores all of the luster of the 1952 original. The movie's stunning color cinematography by Leon Shamroy can now be fully appreciated in all of its depth and richness in the full-screen (1.33-to-1) image, with no loss of detail, and Bernard Herrmann's score -- one of his most free-ranging efforts -- can now be heard properly, in all of its subtlety. The 117 minute movie has been given a generous 24 chapters, and the movie is also accompanied by a documentary, The Snows Of Zanuck: The Making of Kilimanjaro, which is an account of Zanuck's life and his relationship to the work of Hemingway. It turns out that Hemingway and Zanuck had been friends, with The Snows Of Kilimanjaro as the breaking point of their relationship. Zanuck had purchased the rights to the 29-page story, regarded by many as the best work of the author, and then needed to expand that to fill a two-hour screenplay -- to do this, screenwriter Casey Robinson drew from almost everything that Hemingway ever wrote, which the author resented, both in terms of exceeding any rights that he'd sold to Zanuck and what it did to his story, along with the altered ending. It's surprising that nowhere in the documentary does anyone go into The Macomber Affair, an earlier Fox adaptation of a Hemingway story starring Gregory Peck, but otherwise the featurette covers a great deal of territory in just 13 minutes of screen time. There are also two audio supplements, A Conversation With Henry King and A Conversation With Casey Robinson. King makes for a fascinating interview, and one only wishes that it had been captured visually as well, so long and rich was his history in Hollywood -- as it is, the two interviews slot in together perfectly, because King spends so much time praising Robinson as a writer. One only wishes that there were a picture of Robinson so go with his interview, but he is a brilliant interview, with a sharp memory and a long, detailed involvement with the story from prior to its even being in pre-production. There is also an original trailer, for those curious about the way the movie was marketed at the time of its release, when it became the fourth biggest box-office movie of the year. The disc opens automatically to a two-layer menu that's simple to use and offers easy access to all of these special features, as well as a showcase for the restoration effort undertaken on this movie and the others in the studio's Ernest Hemingway Collection package."