"That Hemingway Kind of Love": Macomber in the Movies

Despite some notable attempts, the movies have usually failed in filming Hemingway's fiction. They recreate the literal action but have been unable to render the narrative style, the interior monologues, the sensitive evocation of time and place, and the sense of grace under pressure. His short stories pose even greater difficulties when adapted to full-length films. "The Killers" has been screened twice and televised once; but in each case the script has to expand Hemingway's terse narrative by adding an involved plot, either flashing back to include a crime melodrama leading up to the appearance of the killers or moving beyond Hemingway's ending to show Nick Adams' attempts to foil the killers The 1946 film version was excellent, but only the first ten minutes were Hemingway. "My Old Man" was filmed in 1950 as Under My Skin, with John Garfield and Michelline Presle in an involved plot about a once crooked jockey's attempt to go straight, that was more Hollywood than Hemingway. The Snows of Kilimanjaro" floundered along in a lengthy 1952 epic, turning the condensed reminiscences of the dying writer into a flabby series of episodes that imitated The Sun Also Rises, A Farewell to Arms, For Whom the Bell Tolls and came across almost as a parody of the entire Hemingway canon. Finally, Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man strung together a number of the Nick Adams stories (with a screenplay by A. E. Hotchner) into a film that the New York Times Guide to Movies on TV calls "an embarrassingly shapeless, flabby, and meaningless mishmash." The most nearly faithful and successful screen version of a Hemingway short story is an adaptation of "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber," directed in 1946 by Zoltan Korda. The original story is one of Hemingway's longer ones, with sufficient action to be developed at some length on the screen. The producers had the sense to keep the movie short, less than 80 minutes. The main body of the screenplay by Casey Robinson and Seymour Bennett is so faithful that it uses much of Hemingway's dialogue verbatim. But it adds opening and closing episodes in Nairobi and tacks on a conclusion that is basically false to Hemingway's characters. Though the opening sequence does not occur in the story, it is a reasonable prologue to it, except in one detail. The film begins with Wilson, the guide, meeting Macomber in a Nairobi hotel to arrange for a safari. The American consul tells Macomber it was difficult to get a guide at all and that he had to scrape the bottom to procure Wilson. This suggests that there is something shady about Wilson, whereas Hemingway's hunter is a man of integrity. Otherwise, the opening effectively foreshadows the action to come. There is instructive exposition on weapons and on trophies. Looking at the head of a lion, Macomber asks, "How does a man feel?" "He's wiser if he doesn't," Wilson replies tersely. The two of them buy rifles together. So does Mrs. Macomber, who says, "I'm a terrible shot," thus foreshadowing the ambiguous conclusion. When she orders a Mannlicher, Macomber scoffs, "She'll never use it." It is, of course, the weapon with which she will shoot him. Further foreshadowing the end, she asks Wilson, How does it make a person feel to kill something?" Wilson then explains to her the rules of hunting. They discuss the philosophy and psychology of killing, and we thus understand the code that Macomber will later violate. When Wilson protests that "Women can muck up a safari." we have a hint of what is to come. At the hotel bar, Margot teases Wilson and asks him to dance with her; the sexual tension is already established. During the dance, a bargirl buddy of Wilson's named Amy reacts with jealous resentment. The three leads are played by Gregory Peck as Wilson and Robert Preston and Joan Bennett as Francis and Margot Macomber. Many reviewers thought Peck and Preston should have exchanged roles. Tall, clean-shaven, and very American, Peck looked more like the wealthy socialite, while Preston, shorter, with a close-cropped moustache, resembled the Wilson of the story and even the young Hemingway himself. …