The Macomber Affair

From 1947, "The Macomber Affair" is based on a Hemingway short story about a safari. I watched it knowing full well I didn't want to see animals hunted down, so I admit a certain prejudice.

Joan Bennett and Robert Preston are Margaret and Francis Macomber, an unhappy husband and wife who go on a safari guided by hunter Robert Wilson, played by Gregory Peck. Margaret is openly derisive of her husband, whom she considers somewhat of a coward, and he apparently is on this safari to prove his masculinity. It isn't very successful at first, as Francis runs like a rabbit when he's charged by a lion. I don't know who wouldn't, frankly.

Margaret is attracted to Wilson -- again, who wouldn't be, it's Gregory Peck -- and he falls for her. I don't know why because she's a very unpleasant woman. When a tragedy occurs, Wilson has to decide what really happened - was it an accident or deliberate? This film is somewhat miscast, as it required a Peter Finch or Trevor Howard in the Peck role. Peck doesn't come off as much of a big game hunter. Joan Bennett's character is a little too harsh, which I blame on the director, Zoltan Korda. There doesn't seem to be any reason for his attraction to her; she comes off as emasculating.

The film has an ambiguous ending. I didn't care how it ended, which is a major problem -- you should be invested in the characters.

This is an old-fashioned macho Hemingway story that received better treatment than most of his work. Still -- Hemingway is very difficult to film due to his spare language and all that subtext.

If you like seeing animals shot and killed (though I realize they really weren't) so someone can prove his masculinity, this is the movie for you.

According to the Michael Freedland biography of Gregory Peck, The Macomber Affair was the second of two films he owed Casey Robinson the screenwriter who occasionally produced and directed. The first was Peck's debut film Days Of Glory and for the second since Robinson did not know what he wanted to use Peck for, he let Greg pick the property. As he had just got around to reading the story which had been published a decade earlier in Cosmopolitan Magazine, Peck chose the Ernest Hemingway short story, The Short Unhappy Life Of Francis Macomber, the title shortened to The Macomber Affair for marquee purposes.

Producing this film with Robinson was Benedict Bogeaus who usually did B films with real limited production. A second unit crew did go to Africa and got some real nice black and white jungle footage, but the cast did this one strictly on the back lot. I have to give Bogeaus and Robinson good marks for editing the film shot with the cast in with the background.

In fact this film is a notch or so above Gregory Peck's second film with a Hemingway subject, The Snows Of Kilimanjaro which was shot in Africa. This one is no frills Hemingway with the exception of a changed and cop out ending to please the Code.

Gregory Peck plays the white hunter who escorts Mr.&Mrs. Francis Macomber on a safari where they are trying to recapture the magic that has gone from their relationship. Peck warns them up front that women and safaris don't mix and what follows seems to confirm his point of view.

The Macombers are played by Robert Preston and Joan Bennett and they have the much showier parts than Peck does and they make the most of it. Especially Bennett who essays one of the great bitch roles of all time, successfully poaching on a part that Bette Davis or Barbara Stanwyck would have gone to town with. How that woman just demeans Preston especially after he shows some understandable fear as a newbie in the jungle during a hunt for a wounded lion is really just sad.

Under Peck's tutelage who is the ultimate machismo Hemingway hero, Preston starts losing his inhibitions which Bennett cannot stand. The result is tragedy.

Hemingway's timeless writing and subject matter hold up well for today's viewer. We get a realistic portrayal of Africa that you normally don't see from American studios. The Macomber Affair is a film that fans of all the principal players and Papa Hemingway will appreciate centuries from now.

This is a very turpid Hemingway story, which he must have told out of his own experience as a qualified game hunter in Africa, here acting as a guide (Gregory Peck) for a married couple (Robert Preston and Joan Bennett), the man being very rich and bringing his wife to Africa in a vain effort to impress on her and save their marriage. Of course it turns the other way around. The film starts with his corpse being carried off an airplane and Gregory escorting a very depressed wife down from it, then concentrating on Gregory to deal with the aftermath of the matter in the shape of hangover thoughts, turning to a long flashback, which is the major part of the film. Was it an accident or was it murder? Neither Joan Bennett nor Gregory Peck can anser that question, which will follow you out.

Hunting wild animals, especially when they are of the noble kind like lions, must be perhaps the most despicable sport in the world, especially today, when so many of those finest animals are facing extinction, but this film shows clearly the rotten turpidity and destructive meaninglessness of it as a sport. There is some comfort in that nowadays safari tourists don't shoot animals except by cameras, but there are still abominable poachers around, that should be shot themselves, everyone of them.

Based on a Hemingway short story. And Hemingway knew how to craft stories that epitomized realms of male supremacy. His world was one of combat, African safaris, bull rings… all the places where "real men" constantly had to prove masculine courage. Women were an accessory… the old "Can't live with them, Can't live without them" philosophy.

In this movie, all that comes across in spades. Robert Preston is Francis Mocamber, led around by the nose on a chain by his wife Margaret, played by Joan Bennett. They hire great white hunter Robert Wilson, portrayed by Gregory Peck, to guide them on safari. In the Mocamber marriage it's the wife who wears both the pants and the skirt. The trip is no picnic in the jungle but a miserable, forced emotional trek where the two men just get worn out by Margaret's constant authoritarianism and general bitchiness. Tragedy ensues…who woulda guessed it?!

Not much more to be said. If you subscribe to the Hemingway universe, this movie is for you.

THE MACOMBER AFFAIR has to be rated a success for the mere fact that it finally brings a Hemingway story to the screen pretty much intact and the way he wrote it. GREGORY PECK may not be the perfect choice to play the guide escorting a quarrelsome JOAN BENNETT and ROBERT PRESTON on a safari, but he acquits himself well enough in the role.

I found it a lot more satisfying than the later SNOWS OF KILIMINJARO in which Peck again was cast in the lead as a Hemingway white hunter in Africa. Although that film had the advantage of Technicolor and more expensive trappings, THE MACOMBER AFFAIR achieves more of an edge by being photographed in somber B&W, even though some of the stock footage and backgrounds are obviously studio shots.

Bennett is fascinating as the woman full of scorn for her husband and gradually showing her interest in Peck while Preston's resentment begins to turn paranoid. Miklos Rozsa's score gives it a film noir feeling despite the jungle setting--and it becomes a war of nerves before the satisfying conclusion.

Well worth watching for some interesting performances.