Before we proceed, please take note of the film’s title: King Solomon’s Mines. Take a second look. Throw it around a little. Got it? Good. Now imagine that what follows is a 103-minute motion picture where, for a good 102 of those minutes, no mines are seen. Not a Solomon in sight, let alone a King. Moreover, the mines – I say again, glimpsed ONCE in a movie with the title we’ve discussed – aren’t even mentioned by the characters. One would think, as Deborah Kerr and Stewart Granger take an eternity to reach said mines, that they’d at least bring them up now and again. An anecdote? Maybe a quip? A hushed campfire legend about the glory and danger ahead? No, sir. Not a peep. Dead fucking silence.
And when they finally do reach the mines (actually Carlsbad Caverns National Park, but never mind) with but minutes left in the production? A heap of jewels, yes, and even a sweep of the hand to make real the myth of old, but not a thing to follow. No diamonds stuffed frantically in bags, no sweaty-faced portraits of greed, not even a woman to demand a new set of earrings. The treasure is observed, noted, and forgotten about in equal measure. Cue end credits. I haven’t been this misled by a film’s title since The Greatest Story Ever Told.
Other delights abound. Kerr deciding at waterfall’s edge to crudely remove the entirety of her hair with dull scissors, only to appear in the very next scene looking as if Vidal Sassoon himself had been airlifted into sub-Saharan Africa. Granger (as Allan Quatermain) thrusting himself center screen not once, but six times, shirtless, shaved, and bronzed to perfection. The actual killing of an elephant (Africa lacks a PETA chapter, apparently). More faceless and nameless African tribesmen than have ever been featured in a Hollywood production. A good half hour of stock footage featuring stampeding giraffes, half-crazed alligators, and cheetahs on the prowl. And walking. Lots of walking. Followed by the setting up of tents, Kerr screaming, and a shot or two being fired in the direction of a snake. Oh, and Kerr collapsing from the heat. I stopped counting when it reached double digits.
Characters? Decidedly cardboard. Dialogue? So blissfully unimportant I can’t remember a single quote worth a damn. Sure, we get a lengthy tribal dance and a hand-to-hand scene of combat that decides the fate of a kingdom, but they come so late in the proceedings that we can’t help but remember that this group has been on a five-month journey in the hottest, sweatiest place on earth and no one has bothered to take a bath. Though Kerr does wash her hair. Once. Thank god she had a curling iron and blow dryer in an 1897 jungle.
Perhaps The Greatest Show on Earth (another title that had little to do with what actually appeared on screen) will forever and always remain the worst Best Picture selection ever made, but it bears repeating that King Solomon’s Mines, Grade-Z dramatics with a Technicolor sheen, managed to wrest a Best Picture nomination from a crowded field of classics, sitting alongside such indisputable juggernauts as All About Eve and Sunset Boulevard in an otherwise dignified Hollywood auditorium. Did anyone snicker as the nominees were read? Did anyone bother to notice that a film about heatstroke and giant spiders wasn’t fit to carry the jock of Mankiewicz and Wilder? Didn’t anyone, from the cinematographer to Jack Fucking Warner himself, notice that we were denied the mines? Likely not, my friends, as that same year, some New York Jew was nominated for playing Cochise. Because of course he was.
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