Green Fire

Saturday is traditionally "Take Out the Trash" Day

Green Fire (Andrew Marton, 1954) 

"...never agree to a role before reading the script."

Grace Kelly

"I had the misfortune to being in the only really bad movie that Grace ever made." 

Stewart Granger

Señor Rian Mitchell (Stewart Granger) is a miner entrepreneur, a man who "looks like he's done things and been places." On one particularly eventful day he's digging around an abandoned mine high in the South American mountains somewhere in Colombia, when he finds a green rock more than the size of his fist, then, making his way from the mine, he's attacked by bandito's, kills one, is clobbered by another, pushed off a cliff, and then nearly attacked by a jaguar, but is saved by a sharp-shooting Spanish monk just in the nick of time. He's done things, alright. But, first impressions say he's had things done TO him!

The "fastest friar in the South" tends to Mitchell's wounds as best he can for the journey off the mountain and takes him to the nearest outpost, the Knowland coffee plantation, home to Catherine (Grace Kelly) and her brother Donald (John Ericson). Tended to by the generosity of the Knowlands and the servitude of their workers, Mitchell makes a quick recovery, regaining consciousness after only a day of bed's rest. He rewards this hospitality by saying he's got to catch the next boat up the river and wanting to find his pants because he has something very valuable in them...like...his car-keys (Yeah, that's it. The car-keys!). Ignoring everyone's protests, Mitchell hurries up and suits up.

He's interrupted by his savior, Father Ripero (Robert Tafur), who lets him know that he found a "valuable ore deposit" while going through his trousers. Mitchell assures him that it's nothing by lying through his teeth and the priest then informs him that he, too, once found the legendary emerald mine, Carrero, once worked by the conquistadors, but covered it up and kept it secret because 1) he's a priest and 2) he knew such riches would only lead to greed, lust, gluttony and the other deadly sins before everyone got tired out and turned to sloth. He then tells Mitchell to say three "hail Mary's" for lying to him. Mitchell just wants to get on the boat, but he tells Ripero he'll back for the emeralds and that the gluttony and lust stuff sound pretty good, too.

The Knowland coffee plantation, located just on the border of a Colombia matte painting.

Mitchell gets back to his business' base, just in time to find out that his partner, Vic Leonard (Paul Douglas) has quit in frustration after twelve years. Mitchell tries, to no avail, to get him to stay, but when the boat is delayed leaving Vic finds Mitchell at a bar, proceeds to get drunk, miss his boat, and Mitchell gambles the funds from the refunded ticket to set up an expedition to the mine and start a mining operation. Vic is mad, but Mitchell convinces him that their efforts will soon pay off.

Vic and Mitchell's boat-trip upriver hits port not too far from the Knowlands'. After a bit of local difficulty, they assemble a work-crew and travel to the mountains to begin work. But, they're under the watchful eye of the bandit leader, El Moro (Murvyn Vye) and he's just as interested in a fortune in emeralds as Mitchell and Vic are. Things become contentious, especially when El Moro tries to sabotage things to discourage the miners from staying, leaving him to collect the spoils. Concurrently, Mitchell and Catherine continue a building interest that heats up when she invites Mitchell and Vic to dinner at the plantation.

Things start to sour in the romance department, when a sudden tunnel collapse halts operations before the emerald deposits are found. Desperate and just-plain-greedy, Mitchell then influences Donald Knowland to lend money and laborers to the mining effort and takes him on as a partner. This puts Catherine in high dudgeon, as the plantation is already short of help to produce a successful harvest. When news of Mitchell's chicanery makes it to Vic, he quits in disgust and offers help to Catherine, whom she takes on as a partner. Trouble is, Vic is also in love with Catherine.

If that doesn't complicate things, brother Donald is killed in a boulder-fall, just as he's discovered the long-sought-after emerald deposits. Mining efforts begin in earnest, but no one is celebrating, especially at the Knowland plantation, where after the death of her brother, the plantation is threatened with flooding due to the mining efforts, putting Catherine's life and livelihood at risk. Mitchell becomes a pariah due to myopic efforts to strike it rich. Maybe he should visit that priest...say a few hundred "Hail Mary's."

You look at Andrew Marton's IMDB page and it's incredible. He did second unit work on some of the biggest movies—where the second unit work was frequently the best part of the picture—and his long string of directing credits—including King Solomon's Mines—shows an inclination towards the exotic with lots of location work spent in far-flung lands and underwater. And he delivers on some good action with explosions and gun-fights amid precipitous locations.

But, the script—by Ivan Goff and Ben Roberts (they wrote the classic, over-the-top White Heat!) is one of those "write me a Clark Gable movie" concoctions where the star is a bad-boy who has to go from a bastard to the side of virtue and have you on his side from the first reel, despite whatever boorishness he displays. That's not Stewart Granger. Granger could play "rogue," but there is always a veneer of civility to it, and Grace Kelly plays one of those poor creations who reluctantly falls for the bad boy against all signs pointing to the obvious that it's a bad match. Kelly can play "sly" and she can play "doormats" (as long as they wise up by the end), but she rarely was good at conveying bad taste.

And the script lets both actors down. It delivers exotic and it delivers last-minute tension and action, but motivations are mighty light and the resulting actions emanating from them are bewildering. It's drama for the sake of drama that merely gets the job done so they can turn up the house-lights. But, a movie shouldn't make you grateful for the occasion.

King Solomon's Mines (1950)

King Solomon's Mines (Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton, 1950) The classic H. Rider Haggard novel, the first in the adventures of Allan Quatermain* has been filmed several times,** but this one is the best known, earning several Academy Award nominations (including Best Picture) and inspiring all sorts of African-set adventures throughout the '50's.

This version boasts dazzling Technicolor cinematography as well as a vast array of wild-life photography including an impressive stampede of zebras, gazelles, even giraffes that threaten to trample the explorers mid-way through their travels to find the husband of Elizabeth Curtis (Deborah Kerr) who has been lost in unexplored Africa (unexplored by whites, that is). It also featured Stewart Granger (he was known as James Stewart in Britain, but changed it so as not to be confused with the American actor) as Quatermain, who's a bit of a stiff, but still manages to be a commanding presence, as he's always the "smartest guy on the veldt."

But, for all the talk of the mines, there is very little time spent in them, as it is used (as in the book) as a trap to contain the colonialists while royal political struggles are going on outside. Where in the novel the Brits are trapped for days, they almost escape immediately in the film (some trap—but a lot of time-compression goes on in the film as a daunting trek seems to take no time at all, with not much wear on the explorers—nobody so much as rips a shirt).

Another worrisome aspect is the sense of a time; there is none. Despite the presence of pith helmets and stabs at period dress, there is no indication that the film is going on in the 19th rather than the 20th century. In fact, Haggard's novel and Quatermain's character are a bit more advanced than the film is willing to go, taking out any references to an interracial romance in the party and Quatermain's expression, though condescending, of admiration for some natives over Europeans.*** 

This one is for the exotic locales and for the testy romance that occurs between Curtis and Quatermain (Curtis is a man looking for his brother in Haggard's novel and needless to say there isn't any romance!). But it would be interesting to revisit the story, make it truer to the source—and that includes not making it an "Indiana Jones" ride as in the 1985 film. I'd also like to see a film of Haggard's combining of his two great creations, "She and Allan." One would hope that they'd be better than this. 

* That's how you spell it, though not necessarily how you pronounce it. Among other egregious liberties taken with the character, the film adaptation of Alan Moore's "The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen" featured the character (played by Sean Connery) and a misspelling of his name as "Quartermain." 

** Including the heinous two-part version done for laughs by the Golan-Globus studios that featured Richard Chamberlain as an Indiana Jones re-write of the character, and Sharon Stone moments before she would become a star. 

*** One other good thing about it (as revealed in an IMDB thread written by a native Kenyan) is that the languages are accurate swahili and kikuyu—spoken well by Granger—and that members of the indigenous tribes were used for the African parts.