Green Fire (1954)

Copyright 29 November 1954 by Loew's Inc. A Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer picture. New York opening at the Mayfair: 24 December 1954. U.S. release: 21 January 1955. U.K. release: February 1955. Australian release: 13 October 1955. Sydney opening at suburban Metro cinemas. 9,013 feet. 100 minutes.SYNOPSIS: An emerald miner in Colombia falls for the young owner of a coffee plantation.NOTES: Location scenes filmed at Barranquilla on the Magdalena River, and in the mountains surrounding Bogota, Colombia.COMMENT: The rush to film stories in CinemaScope resulted in some half-baked adventure dramas whose publicity promised far more entertainment thrills than the movie actually delivered or, as in this case, interspersed those thrills with a routine, lackluster, clichéd and predictable yarn that wasted the considerable talents of the players unwittingly involved in fostering this tedium. Another unfortunate aspect of "Green Fire" is that the climax is entirely contrived by special effects whose miniature sets are painfully obvious on the big screen. This succeeds in dissipating even more of the audience's interest than the sluggish story.Despite background filming in exotic locales (and even these scenes despite the actual presence of the principals in them are presented in a somewhat too pedestrian fashion to rouse all that much interest — and there is one glaringly bad phony backdrop which invites audience derision) and all the efforts of the principals to let loose with their star power charm, virility and lovable, heroic grouchiness (and a nice if all too brief study in villainy from Murvyn Vye) from Kelly, Granger and Douglas respectively, the film succeeds mainly on the strength of its process — namely the box office lure of CinemaScope. Even the promising Rozsa score is dissipated by an inappropriate title tune.

MGM adventure set in Columbia (and beautifully filmed there). Stewart Granger plays a somewhat hapless, but charming, down-on-his-luck mining engineer, hoping to make a big emerald strike. Paul Douglas plays his solid, more practical partner, who's about to quit the game and take a job in Canada, when he's persuaded by Granger to give it one last go. Granger has an accident and ends up recuperating at a comfortable coffee plantation owned by lovely Grace Kelly and her brother, John Ericson. Granger and Grace fall for one another, but complications ensue, including conflicting ethics. Yes, you've seen it all before, and despite top stars and first-class production values, as well as landslides, animal attacks, a villain called El Moro, and Granger with his shirt off, the picture still comes across as a bit of a potboiler. On the plus side, Granger and Kelly are both more nonchalant and casual than usual. In a far cry from her Hitchcock outings, Grace even drives a Jeep, rides horseback, gets dirty and wet, and performs manual labor. All in Helen Rose designs.If you don't take any of it very seriously, you'll probably enjoy "Green Fire." It's one of those movies that doesn't grip you right away, or even in the first hour. When movies were meant to be seen in theaters, filmmakers were free to set up the story slowly, because the audience wasn't going anywhere. They weren't going to change the channel. This picture sets everything up solidly, eventually leading to an exciting climax and satisfying conclusion.

"Green fire. Emeralds burning like blue fire. So rare. So precious to own." So goes the theme song of this echt-1950s Hollywood adventure in an exotic land. Those lyrics, which do not hang upon the cheek of this movie like a rich jewel in an Ethiope's ear, no matter how hard I try to love them, are about on a par with the rest of the story.Greedy Stewart Granger and skeptical Paul Douglas are two mining engineers determined to find emeralds in a South American country. They set up a camp on a promising mountain and spend a good deal of time fraternizing with the owners of a neighboring coffee plantation -- Grace Kelly and her callow brother, John Ericson.Granger and Kelly fall in love under the tropical moon. Douglas falls too, but he's fat and older and not nearly as smooth as Granger. I believe, though, that Kelly, had she thought about it, would have found Douglas's Philadelphia accent engagingly familiar. "Oh, come awn, I'm no sub-stee-tute for Stewart Granger." Inevitably, there is conflict. It comes in two forms. First El Moro, this greaseball bandido, finds the idea of stealing any emeralds, those stones so precious to own, appealing and lets the two miners know that he'll return when circumstances call for it. Second, the mine shaft that Granger, Douglas, and a handful of men have dug into the mountain has collapsed. This means that they either return as failures or they "step mine," which we would call "strip mining." And this requires lots of dough, which they don't have, and is labor intensive. Granger the greedy implements a simple solution without Douglas's knowing about it. He talks Ericson into funding the mining enterprise with the plantation's entire kitty, and Ericson brings all the plantation workers to the mine, leaving Kelly with a ripe crop of coffee beans and nobody to harvest and process them.Other tribulations follow. Ericson is accidentally killed. The sluice from the mine changes the course of the river and threatens Kelly's plantation, on which the women of the village are now working tirelessly as a replacement for the absent men. El Moro shows up, eyes beady, teeth glistening, phonemes slurring. A shoot out at the climax, and all the bad guys die in an avalanche while all the good guys live, and the river changes its course, and the plantation is saved, and Granger has an epiphany, and it ends happily.Frankly, I kind of enjoyed it. Granger is tan and fit and leaps around like Errol Flynn. Grace Kelly is the most beautiful and least probable owner of a tropical empire you've ever seen. She looks almost sassy in those starched blouses and tight slacks. Paul Douglas is always easy to identify with because he completely lacks any of the social graces. John Ericson -- what is he doing in this movie? What was he doing in ANY movie? The special effects are good for their period. The gun fight at the end, with the bandidos peppering away at the human springbok Granger, had some novel sounds and original minor effects. Bullets zip through the air. And when they ricochet, it's with a soft "ptew" rather than the traditional loud, vibrating "whanggggg." If they hit a wooden object, a chip flies off. Now, this all sounds like a matter of little consequence, but it was new at the time and quite exciting.But, Dios mio, this is an OLD story. Warners and the other studios were grinding them out like Sonicburgers back in the 30s and thereafter. Reckless, materialistic adventurer goes into the wilderness, falls in love with a local, and is redeemed. Well, I'll just mention "His Majesty O'Keefe" as another typical example. This one happens to be more entertainingly done than most.

Stewart Granger is Rian Mitchell, who finds the famous lost mine which is supposed to be just filled with emeralds, thus the name of the film, "Green Fire", from MGM. At first, his partner Vic (Paul Douglas ) isn't interested, and just wants to take a regular job in Canada, but ends up staying. At one point, to try to win money, Rian plays a game called Tejo, which seems to be a game of aim. One pitches a disk at a sandbox, which contains a small ball of clay which has a bullet or some explosive under it; you know you have hit it right on the head when it explodes and bursts into the air. Of course, the explosives are handled by a young kid..... where is Child Protective Services ? I looked up the game up on yahoo.com, and it seems to be a real game in Columbia. The miners get intertwined with the American owners of a plantation, as well as with Father Ripero (Robert Tafur) who seems to be on their side, bandits, and of course, a mariachi band, which was quite talented - couldn't find them listed in cast or music/sound credits... too bad. This story is quite similar to "Elephant Walk" (Paramount studios), which also came out in 1954 - Americans travel to foreign land, and take on nature. Not bad... better than I thought it would be. Filmed in cinemascope, ratio of 2.55 to 1, so it's shown in letterbox on TCM.