Fuoco verde

This colorful picture is set in Columbia, South America , and specifically at the treacherous jungle . There prospector Rian Mitchell (Stewart Granger) comes across what he thinks may be an important emerald site . A bit later on , emerald miner Mitchell is wounded by some bandits , however meets plantation owner named Catherine Knowland (Grace Kelly) and nursed back to health . Catherine along with her brother Donald (John Ericsun) runs a coffee plantation. Rian goes back to get his colleague Vic Leonard (Paul Douglas) to join him in his mining venture . When they come back to the location , they must deal with a nasty native , El Moro, who claims he has rights for the land the major mine is on . Meanwhile , Mitchell and Catherine fall in love and they subsequently are threatened by El Moro .

This exciting film contains adventures , thrills , a love story and colorful outdoors well photographed by cameraman Paul Vogel . Plenty of a Hollywood all-star cast as Granger, Kelly , Douglas and Ericsun ; however ordinary script complications muddle the tale . Director Andrew Marton likes lots of big , noisy explosions , especially at its finale , when he doesn't know what else to do . Heat and ills affected the crew and main actors but they surprised for her resistance . During location shooting in Columbia actors lived aboard a huge barge moored in a river , when the river suddenly into spate , the boat broke loose and was drifting at speed down the river when the natives in canoes rescued the players . Special mention to musical score by the classical Miklos Rozsa , a great composer expert on impressive atmosphere in Noir cinema and epic films .

The motion picture was professionally directed by Andrew Marton , though with no originality and some moments result to be a little boring . Marton was a specialist on Wartime movies as : ¨The thin red line¨ , ¨The longest day ¨and adventure movies as ¨African Texas style¨, ¨Around the world under the sea¨, ¨Clarence , the cross-eyed lion¨, and ¨King Salomon's mines¨(1950) co-directed by Compton Bennett and Andrew Marton directed the second unit , he then was tasked with replacing Compton Bennett as director after the latter had been taken ill . One of his more prestigious assignments came about by chance to lay in some excellent work as second-unit director , notably in charge of the chariot race for William Wyler's ¨Ben-Hur¨ (1959), as well as of the Normandy invasion sequences for the World War II . After his contract with MGM expired in 1954, Marton founded his own production company in conjunction with fellow Hungarian émigrés Ivan Tors and Laslo Benedek . He later concentrated on TV adventure series, helming the pilots, respectively for "Daktari" (1966) and "Cowboy in Africa" .

Before writing this review I looked up emeralds in Wikipedia and found that Paul Douglas was wrong when he said during the film that emeralds are only found in two places, Colombia and the Soviet Union, specifically Siberia. They are found in all kinds of places including some areas of the USA. Would that were the only thing wrong with this film.

Still Colombia is the area best known for it and until recently when you thought of Colombia you thought of emeralds and coffee. Now sad to say you think drug cartel. But back in 1954 it was emeralds that was on the minds of adventurers Stewart Granger and Paul Douglas. They've discovered an abandoned mine that they think was abandoned prematurely. And the only place to get laborers is from the nearby coffee plantation owned by brother and sister Grace Kelly and John Ericson.

Young Ericson is hot to trot to help Granger and Douglas, Kelly less so. But she does have an eye for Granger even with both men pursuing her.

And of course there's bandit chief Murvyn Vye who actually does own the land where the emeralds might be found. But he'd just as soon let others do the back breaking work of digging them out.

Now with all the information I've given I think 99% of viewers would see where this one is going. In fact that's Green Fire's main problem, it's your basic routine action/adventure flick on which MGM decided to spend a ton of money. For one thing it's best asset is the color location cinematography in the Colombian jungles. After King Solomon's Mines and The African Queen, American audiences would not accept back lot jungles any longer. Note that Stewart Granger was the star of King Solomon's Mines and he got first crack at every jungle picture that came along after that.

Green Fire is hardly as good as King Solomon's Mines. Grace Kelly seemed pretty distant in this film, looking like she was a Philadelphia débutante rather than a coffee plantation owner. She did a flock of good films this year, Rear Window, The Bridges At Toko-Ri and her Oscar winner The Country Girl in 1954. Green Fire just isn't in the class of the others.

In short, admire the flora and fauna of Green Fire and the story is something you can live with.

"Rian X. Mitchell" (Stewart Granger) is an ambitious mining entrepreneur who is looking in Columbia for a long-lost emerald mine built by the Conquistadors in 1687. He finds it but some bandits also find him and he is shot, robbed, pushed off a hillside and left for dead. He manages to stumble away but is then attacked by a jaguar. Fortunately, a village priest named "Father Ripero" (Robert Tafur) happens to be there and shoots the jaguar before it can kill Rian. Father Ripero then takes him to a nearby coffee plantation where "Catherine Knowland" (Grace Kelly) manages to tend his wounds. When he recovers he tells her that he has a partner, "Vic Leonard" (Paul Douglas) that he has to see right away but that he will return. Once he and his partner return to the coffee plantation they begin to work on the emerald mine which creates difficulties for all concerned. Anyway, having given the initial plot I will stop right here so as not to spoil the movie for anyone who wishes to view it. That said, while the entire cast performed in a decent manner the film seemed slow in some parts and lacked energy. Part of the problem may have been that the romance between Rian and Catherine lacked passion. Likewise, the action was solid but not very unique or original. In short, this is a decent movie with beautiful scenery and a capable cast. But with all it had going for it I believe it should have been better.

This seemed like a very ordinary adventure entertainment out in the jungles of South America about coffee and emeralds, but it turned out better than expected, mainly because of superb acting by Stewart Granger and Paul Douglas. The best scenes are when they are drunk together. It's a good story which provokes some afterthought and could teach anyone a thing or two, and there is an amounting turn of action towards the end when the bandit league really do their best to turn everything to the worst. Another asset of the film is Miklos Rosza's music - it could turn any film into a maze of magic. The colour is also splendid, and as an entertainment it is definitely first class, not only because Grace Kelly is into it as well, but firstly because of the exoticism and excellence of the story of how two good-for-nothings finally get together in the end for something good.

Green Fire is a pretty good watch. Stewart Granger is at his handsome best and he and Kelly certainly present their characters as a couple with spark between them. Paul Douglas is a rock, as usual in his supporting role as the loyal partner to Grangers leading man. I was pleasantly surprised by Kelly's acting in this little film. She was better and less like an inexperienced young actress than I have seen her before. I liked the restrained quality in her performance. Oddly it was the exact opposite to this, in Grangers performance, which appealed to me. He was at the top of his form, physically lithe and handsome and at the top of his form as the stereotypical dashing leading man. He owned the part. I rate this film as at the top of its genre pile! It was enjoyable but not difficult, and full of eye candy for boys and girls. Great fun.