L'affaire Macomber

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.

I did not read the short story, so i can only go by what i saw and heard in the movie. It is possible I missed some dialogue along the way that would tell me how long this couple ( Bennett and Preston ) were on the safari, for Peck's character to fall in love with Bennett, who showed a side of contempt of her husband in front of him...now that really should turn a man on, right? The leads do well in their parts, but it was Bennett that surprised me...she was really a 'bitch' as they say. I couldn't see her in this role as her usual natural Blond, but since her transformation of the Hedy Lamarr look ( she dyed her hair black ) cause she was enamored of the Hedy face, as millions of others had at that time, her career got a boost. That said, and the ambiguous ending made an interesting hour and a half for me.

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 Zoltan Korda adaptation of Hemingway's bitter tale of big game hunting and marital infidelity is the best movie adaptation of this author's work I have ever seen. Only Gregory Peck seems miscast in what is basically a Trevor Howard part, but this doesn't bring the movie down, it merely limits it. As the superficially charming, boyish, gregarious and basically not very nice Macomber, Robert Preston is brilliant, and he gives a daring, emotionally open performance. Joan Bennett is good as his wife, better than Peck but not perfect casting, either. What makes the movie work is its nasty story, and Casey Robinson's excellent and correct interpretation of it. The Hemingway mood, macho and misogynist, and misanthropic more than anything else, is caught to such perfection one might almost suspect that he was technical adviser (he wasn't). British East Africa is given the Tarzan treatment on screen, typical of the forties but for some difficult to take now. I find that it works, as Tarzan and Hemingway weren't a million miles apart in temperament and values, though I imagine that Tarzan was nicer fellow to get along with.

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.