Another case of the movie that appears much older and outdated than his 1920s and 1930s relatives - I can genuinely enjoy silent movies like "Nosferatu" or almost anything by D. W. Griffith but once we arrive in supposedly golden era of lavish Hollywood movies, things rarely work for me. My guess is that after success of 1951. "The African Queen" it seemed as a obvious idea to continue using African/Safari theme, with bunch of than huge, bankable stars and when Ernest Hemingway sold the rights for his story to Twentieth Century-Fox for a good money at the time, he should be the last person to complain about results having nothing to do with his original idea. As expected, Hollywood kept the title and location, twisting and stretching everything in between beyond recognition.
Gregory Peck is a bitter, empty man who have no joy out of his success as a writer of popular novels or from relationships this fame brings. In his opinion, these novels are just a trash and he is prostituting his talent for money - that this enables him to roam around the world in search for kicks and dine in a fine restaurants everywhere from Paris to Spain obviously don't matter, same for women throwing themselves at him. Neither Ava Gardner, Hildegard Knef or Susan Hayward mean something to him, although the movie suggest that Gardner was the right one - but I have my doubts, because he misses her only when she eventually refuses to be his doormat. Peck/Hemingway comes off as an extremely unlikable and unsympathetic, egoistic character obsessed only with himself and as his supposed soul-searching during never-ending agony of blood poisoning somewhere during safari (with hyenas and vultures lurking around) continues forever, I just wished him to die and shut up. Where the script fails - and miserably so - is to explain why on earth would any of these fine women roll in front of him, with tears in their eyes and pulling their hair in desperation; yes, he was obviously Gregory Peck but besides his obvious looks, there was absolutely nothing else going on for him, the guy was just a selfish prick destined to hang around bars with prostitutes on each arm and bawl later somewhere drunk.
Somewhere between the lines (hidden really, really deep) is the idea of middle-age existential crisis which might have been appealing to the audiences who swarmed the cinemas back than, although my guess is that people were just attracted with the package that matched biggest Hollywood stars and to hell with the message. Personally I find all that macho posturing and waving with the big guns in front of unsuspecting animals completely ludicrous and don't even let me start about bullfights. I honestly wished that hyena ate Gregory Peck alive and save me from this agony. The movie tortured me so much that for some time I don't even want to think about Ernest Hemingway.
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