Ava's Back in Town

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moira finnie
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Ava's Back in Town

Post by moira finnie »

Since the wonderful recent discussion touched on Pandora and the Flying Dutchman, perhaps all things Ava could have a thread of its own?

Just a heads up that you can catch Ava Gardner in The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952), an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's story that will be broadcast on TCM on Wednesday, January 26,2011 9:30 PM. It's not a great movie, (Hemingway called it "The Snows of Zanuck") but the moments when the movie comes alive are almost all due to Ava, at least to me. See what you think:
[youtube][/youtube]
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by MissGoddess »

I agree, Moira, Ava's the heart of that movie, the best thing in it. Her "Cynthia" ranks among my favorite of her characters. She's heartbreaking.

That scene there, where Ava first meets Peck by leaning in from the next table, is one of my all time favorites. I think she's positively radiant.
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by moira finnie »

I think that Ava Gardner was able to bring out the sensualist in the sometimes self-conscious and solemn young Gregory Peck. You see it in The Great Sinner and On the Beach too--though none of these are great movies and have some serious flaws--their relationship on screen in scenes together are positively languid. When "Cyn" wasn't in the story, it just wasn't the same.
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by Sue Sue Applegate »

Agreed! Ava Gardner and Gregory Peck have chemistry, but then Ava's sensuality could probably rev up any engine with starter trouble!

I have always especially enjoyed the poignant onscreen electricity between Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner during their interludes in On the Beach. I always felt that there were moments between those two that we will never know, never understand, and never be privy to, but when they illuminate the celluloid together, it always has those bittersweet moments that we seem to have lost in our youth, but still may recapture if just...

Her maid, Carmen Vargas, and her Welsh Corgy came to live with Peck and his wife Veronique after Gardner's death.

And lest we not forget, Ava biographer Lee Server's visit to the SSO is located on the archived thread:
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by klondike »

Sue Sue Applegate wrote: but then Ava's sensuality could probably rev up any engine with starter trouble!
Vroooooom, vrum-vrum-vrooooom !
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by Sue Sue Applegate »

Ha! :lol:

I am watching Snows as I type....

Fashion Conscience...

I love her khaki Kenya outfit. I used to have one like that when I was in college, but it was an A-line dress with a belt, and her outfit she dons when she
leaves the doctor's office is so cute with the pleated skirt and her hat....I loved that coffee-coloured hat.
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by moira finnie »

"Don't you people talk to each other?" the doctor asks Peck after Ava has thrown herself down a staircase. That question never gets answered, does it?

Christy, I love the red cloche hat and coat she wore when they first met and were walking along the banks of the Seine (or at least the rear projection version of it). For once, a movie actually seemed to have at least one character wear clothes that fit the period. (Charles Le Maire is the credited costume director with Sam Benson as costume supervisor. No designer was noted. Wonder why?)
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by Lzcutter »

Do all they do is talk (even if it's not to one another?).

This movie is why I don't much like Hemingway either his books or the movies made from them.

The characters aren't particularly likable or unlikable. They are boring and the fact that it's Gregory Peck and Ava Gardner should make this worth watching.

Unfortunately, the costumes are much more interesting than the characters.
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by MissGoddess »

She did it again,
Ava's "Cyn" broke my heart.
I just couldn't help it. I love
the character, and I feel the panick
in Peck's voice when he screams for
the stretcher bearers. Only in a movie
would those two find each other like
that on the field of battle.

and when she's gone, the movie collapses
in on itself.
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by Sue Sue Applegate »

One or two hankies?

It does implode on itself, Miss G. And the best moment after that is probably the hyena, like Hemingway claimed.

But "Papa" Hemingway also had a great way with self-promotion, and if he didn't write it, he had a general disdain for it, especially if he didn't receive the compensation he felt he deserved. He was a great writer, but he wasn't necessarily a great sharer. He had difficulty letting go of his creations into the larger world in some ways.

But Ava was lovely in this film, and her relationship with "Harry" was a magical one for me. I don't think this movie is as lost as Hemingway claims. For me, I am riveted when Ava and Gregory Peck light up the screen. Even the nasty character Hildegard Neff plays, Countess Liz, is almost as frosty as the snows, but she is never boring.
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by MissGoddess »

for the first time, I felt a little for Hildegarde's character, Liz. I still don't like her, but she did have some right to be jealous of a fiance who was getting love letters from an old flame. But she was selfish. I liked the frosty scene between her and Leo Carroll, who I wish had shared at least one scene with "Cynthia". I would like for some outsider to have seen them together and who would later be able to make ~Harry understand better what he lost. It's not so clear...he regrets her loss, deeply, but it's shown in such a confused way. Or maybe I'm just confused. but i still would love for Leo to have met Cyn. he'd have liked her as much as he disliked liz.

Oh, and ten hankies, Sue. :D
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by Sue Sue Applegate »

I would have liked to see that scene. I have always loved Leo G. Carroll, and he would have made any scene with Ava even more memorable.

But there is confusion, Miss G. Sometimes it seems like Harry's most tortured about his writing and sometimes he seems most tortured by the memory of Cynthia. I can't help but tear up at the overturned ambulance scene. It is meant to be dramatic, and I know that it is meant to be a tear-jerking scene,
but it always jerks a tear or two from me.

And if that had been my fiance gettin' a letter from some gal in Spain livin' in a hotel, oh...brother. You'd really see some action, then! :roll:
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by klondike »

Sue Sue Applegate wrote: And if that had been my fiance gettin' a letter from some gal in Spain livin' in a hotel, oh...brother. You'd really see some action, then! :roll:
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Is more deadly than the male
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Man, I only wish some of the short-tempered gals in my past had looked more like Ava, and less like Frances McDormand -I would certainly have been more willing to withstand their ire & audacity, and more capable of enduring it . . . but like most men, down beneath one layer, or three, I'm pure, rutting pig, I guess, because all of us, sooner or later, are the servitors of our chemistry . . and I reckon that brings me around to my only valid complaint about TSoK: there is everyone trying to make the most out of their dynamic-yet-threadbare roles, striving to work as much significance as possible, and at the eye of this "mortal storm" is our Ava, hitting all her marks with precision, sounding like a poet's whiskey dream, and charming hell out of that camera, and yet somehow always feeling restrained within her character - her decision, a shortcoming of script, fault of the director?
I doubt it had to do with formulaic editing - memorable though it was, the source work by EH was a mumbling, rambling narrative that barely limped out to novella length, condemning it to flagship other works in various Hemingway omnibi . . .
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Re: Ava's Back in Town

Post by Sue Sue Applegate »

He did ramble. And that ego. When he went on safari, they must have had to rearrange all the elephants and hippos just so the pack train could go through... :lol:
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