Green Fire

Plot synopsis:
The film opens with adventurer Rian Mitchell (Stewart Granger) inside a dark mine shaft, deep in the side of a Colombian mountain. He chips away at a vein of greenish ore, pockets a sparkling specimen, and starts back toward the entrance. On his way out, he stumbles upon a bronze conquistador's helmet. Chiseled above the mine entrance is the inscription "1687." Once outside, Mitchell carefully conceals the entrance with brush and starts down the mountainside. He suddenly notices a group of birds taking flight and warily pulls out his gun. He gets the drop on a lurking Colombian bandit, but the bandit's two companions fire on Mitchell and wound him. Knocked unconscious, Mitchell is stripped of his personal belongings and rolled down the mountainside to die.Once he comes to, a bleeding Mitchell stumbles through the dense jungle, only to be trailed by a hungry jaguar. He stops at a river to quench his burning thirst, and just then the jaguar pounces down on him from a huge boulder. A gunshot suddenly rings out, killing the beast. Mitchell looks up to discover a robed priest, rifle in hand. The priest helps Mitchell onto a horse and takes him to the sprawling coffee plantation of beautiful Catherine Knowland (Grace Kelly). The unconscious Mitchell is patched up by Catherine, awakening a full day later to discover his good fortune. He is nonetheless in a hurry to leave, insisting that she take him to board a river boat so that he can resume his journey. Catherine warns him that he needs to recuperate more fully, but she reluctantly agrees to drive him to the boat in her Jeep. A subsequent conversation between Catherine and her brother, Donald, reveals that the coffee plantation is struggling to survive and produce a successful harvest. As Mitchell dresses to leave, the priest confides that he came across the valuable ore sample in Mitchell's trousers. Mitchell tries to pass the specimen off as a worthless rock, but the priest knows better. He explains that he too once discovered the fabled emerald mine of the conquistadores, but he kept the location a secret, fearing the greed and violence that its discovery would produce. Mitchell frankly assures him that he is coming back for the emeralds.At the river landing, Mitchell bids a fond farewell to Catherine and says he will be back to "return her brother's borrowed clothes." She has to loan him the money for the boat fare. Back in the city, Mitchell returns to his mining consulting office and the waiting arms of his pretty Colombian secretary. She explains that his partner Vic Leonard (Paul Douglas) has given up and is catching a boat back to Canada. Mitchell catches up with him at the waterfront and tells him he has discovered the emerald mine. Leonard is undeterred, completely disgusted after twelve years of futility. When the boat is delayed, Leonard hunts down Mitchell at a cantina and joins him for drinks. Mitchell later helps his drunken partner to a hotel, relieves him of his boat ticket, and uses the refunded money to gamble. He wins big and talks an angry Vic Leonard into staying. They are soon headed upstream on the tiny riverboat.After an adventurous river trip, they arrive at the landing near Catherine's plantation. Mitchell tries to hire a large crew of laborers for the mining expedition, but when the local foreman discovers where Mitchell is headed he refuses to help recruit anyone. Catherine eventually shows up at the dock and coyly spars with the cocky, self-assured Mitchell. Mitchell soon recruits a group of men on his own and they journey to the mine. The mining crew is soon under threat from the local bandit chief, El Moro.Mitchell and Leonard are invited to dinner at Catherine's hacienda. As the romance between Mitchell and Catherine gradually blossoms, success at the mine remains elusive. Mitchell divulges to Catherine that his father was an impoverished coal miner, dying a broken man. Mitchell had vowed to become a miner himself, but a rich one.As work inside the mine progresses, a fight between two laborers loosens some support timbers and causes a cave-in. Mitchell is injured and pinned under falling rocks, but Vic charges in to save him. Nevertheless, the mine shaft is choked with debris. Mitchell and Leonard concede that they would need a great deal of money to resume their excavations, and no mining syndicate would touch the risky venture. Out of desperation, Mitchell slyly cons Catherine's restless brother into providing an infusion of cash and plenty of laborers from the coffee plantation. The plantation is left without workers or money.Catherine is furious with her brother and with Mitchell. To make matters worse, Vic is also disgusted with him.
Vic angrily splits with Mitchell and returns to the plantation, where he offers to help Catherine for free. He also awkwardly admits that he is in love with her. She takes him on as an unpaid partner. Just as a hopeful new spirit is born on the coffee plantation, a tragedy occurs at the mine. A falling boulder crushes Donald Knowland just after he uncovers a brilliant emerald outcropping. His funeral is held at the Knowland plantation, where Rian Mitchell is treated like an outcast.More emeralds are soon unearthed, and activity at the mine turns feverish. A new sluice box funnels the mine tailings directly into the river, altering its course and sending torrents of water downstream toward the Knowland plantation, threatening to flood it. Worse, the rainy season is fast approaching. Vic Leonard angrily tells Catherine that her plantation can only be saved by blowing up the mine, choking the current river channel and re-directing the water flow. She reluctantly agrees. Leonard plants dynamite above the sluice channel, then awakens a groggy Mitchell and advises him to get off the mountain before it blows up. Mitchell's workers flee the impending explosion as Mitchell and Leonard furiously duke it out. Catherine breaks up the fight and calls off the detonation. A dejected Leonard prepares to leave with her, but Mitchell stops him. He concedes that the mine must be destroyed. Just as they are preparing to blow the mine, El Moro and his men attack. The bandits are after the emeralds.A heated gun battle ensues, and Mitchell realizes that his small band is hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned. His only option is to reach the dynamite charges and blow the face (and the bandits) off of the mountain. Catherine and Vic provide covering fire as Mitchell works his way up the steep slope to the dynamite charges. He sets the timer and starts his escape, but he is cut off by El Moro. His fight with the bandit dangerously delays him as the timer counts down. Catherine and Vic begin their descent without Mitchell. Suddenly, a massive explosion erupts and the mountain cascades down around Mitchell. Catherine and Vic exchange a sorrowful gaze and continue down the trail. From a clifftop, they can see that the avalanche has accomplished its purpose. The river has been diverted. Suddenly, Mitchell appears behind them, beaming. Catherine rushes to embrace him as Vic good-naturedly cheers their reunion. Reaching into his pocket, Mitchell happily presents Catherine with a beautiful emerald cluster. "My dowry," he exclaims as he kisses the radiant Catherine.

Tags: romantic, murder

Review:
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.
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.
But back in 1954 it was emeralds that was on the minds of adventurers Stewart Granger and Paul Douglas.
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.
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.
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.
Adventures , action , romance and emerald mines in the exotic Columbian jungles ..
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 .
Rian goes back to get his colleague Vic Leonard (Paul Douglas) to join him in his mining venture .
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 .
Special mention to musical score by the classical Miklos Rozsa , a great composer expert on impressive atmosphere in Noir cinema and epic films .
The story well written and paced, the characters well portrayed, especially by Granger and Douglas.
Granger was a natural as the adventurous treasure hunting mining engineer , Douglas, solid and humane , played his long time partner and friend.
Filmed partially on location in Colombia, the movie offers dashing Stewart Granger as a treasure-hunting adventurer and radiant Grace Kelly as the heir to a struggling coffee plantation.
Granger plays his role with the requisite cockiness, and Kelly just has to look beautiful and act sincere.
The best role falls to Paul Douglas, who plays Granger's world- weary and curmudgeonly business partner.
If you liked The Naked Jungle with Charlton Heston and Eleanor Parker, you will probably like this film, although Charlton Heston's Leiningen and Stewart Granger's Rian Mitchell are very different men.
It isn't great cinema, but if you want to settle in on a Saturday morning with a big mug of coffee and watch some '50s nostalgia, you could do worse than this movie..
Her only film to lose money on original release.The movie is a standard jungle picture typical of the fifties made better then it should be by the cast.
However the best performance as was often the case comes from Paul Douglas.
Even though he didn't have leading man looks he had a bruised dignity that softened his blustering demeanor and made him a sympathetic character.Some nice location photography and a decent if preposterous climax but this is without question the worst picture Grace Kelly made during her brief Hollywood heyday..
Green Fire is a Hollywood movie (with all what it means) One cant imagine a film like this be made any other places.
Grace Kelly is as always what dreams are made of, and a real Hollywood actors like Granger and Douglas know how to make a boy-film.
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.
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...
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.
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.
That said, while the entire cast performed in a decent manner the film seemed slow in some parts and lacked energy.
By far, the cast overshadows this routine action/adventure tale of a duo of soldiers of fortune seeking emeralds in Columbia.
Kelly seems out of place as the young maiden running a coffee plantation, who eventually confronts Granger over labor and water rights.
The location shots are of interest, and Granger and Douglas do the best they can with the script.
This film only captures the audience because of Grace Kelly (Catherine Knowland),"The Swan",'56, who is very charming and magnetic through out the entire picture and is well matched with actor Stewart Granger,(Rian X Mitchell),"King Solomon's Mines",'50, these two great actors make this a classic film because of their great talents.
The director of this film, Andrew Marton was very famous for many great productions like, "Sea Hunt",'58(TV Series) with L.Bridges,Sr, and King Solomon's Mines,'50.
If you adored Grace Kelly, you will like this picture!.
Hard times in Colombia in collapsing emerald mines and a coffee farm at risk.
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.
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.
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..
Both Stewart Granger and Grace Kelly are wasted in this film, even though Kelly was past her best after 'Dial M For Murder'.
In his autobiography, 'Sparks Fly Upwards', Granger says 'Grace had one phobia, her behind.' Admittedly, I did notice that her behind stuck out when Paul Douglas embraced her.
To save her embarrassment, I covered it with both hands.' I bet Paul Douglas would have wanted to do the same thing.Although the film is awful, reading about Stewart's experience of making the film is interesting..
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.
MGM adventure set in Colombia (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.
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.
Granger and Kelly, neither of whom qualify among my favorite actors are the stars.
Sure, I could easily imagine a woman that looks and dresses like Grace Kelly in the Colombian jungle!.
She starred in five films...one of which (THE COUNTRY GIRL) earned her a Best Actress Oscar and two of which were Hitchcock pictures.
But not all these projects were great...as she also starred, inexplicably, in "Green Fire"...a rather pedestrian film where the worst thing about it is Kelly.The story mostly is about Rian Mitchell (Stewart Granger), a scheming treasure hunter who seems to always be on the verge of a bit find....but fails.
As for Catherine (Grace Kelly), she mostly seems to be there as window dressing throughout the film...very weird window dressing.
Grace Kelly's most forgettable film.
Grace Kelly only appeared in eleven films during her brief acting career.
Kelly plays Catherine Knowland, owner of a coffee plantation in Colombia.
Stewart Granger plays Rian Mitchell, who's hunting for emeralds nearby.
Paul Douglas plays Vic Leonard, Rian's reluctant partner in the emerald mining expedition.
Rian gets frustrated, then he gets desperate and desperation can lead to terrible consequences.There's a lot of melodrama here but it doesn't really make for a very good film.
Granger comes across very flat in playing Rian.
The film plods along, leading man Rian being unlucky both in love and emerald mining, desperate enough to do things which make both the other characters and the audience detest him.
Kelly isn't given much to do besides look pretty, though she certainly is good at that.
A handsome looking early Cinemascope/colour romantic adventure story is probably about all that makes MGM's GREEN FIRE (1954) an entertaining enough movie.
Stewart Granger and Paul Douglas are a pair of Emerald miners prospecting in the hills of Colombia.
And Grace Kelly is a neighbourhood coffee planter who Granger has the hots for.
The thinly plotted adventure also has some local bandits headed by the infamous El Moro (Murvin Vye) who, of course, wants any and all of the yet unearthed green stones for himself leading to an action filled finale.Although a constantly busy actor Stewart Granger never did have a hugely distinguished career in film.
Appearing in a number of unmemorable British films in the forties the London born actor landed himself the lead in Metro's "King Solomines Mines" in 1950 followed by a contract with the studio where - with the exception of the fine swashbuckler "Scaremouche" (1952) and "The Wild North" (1951) - he continued on his merry way of churning out a load of indifferent pictures (including a most unfortunate and ill advised attempt at a western in 1957 called "Gun Glory").
Always a very likable character actor Douglas was more at home in urban dramas and light comedies.The film's most tangible aspect is Miklos Rozsa's music!
The highlight of the score (and the movie) is the brilliant, exciting and intense cue that comes towards the end for the picture's climax where the composer uses an ingenious, frantic and rhythmic clock ticking sound in the orchestra for the build-up of tension as Granger sets the timer on the explosives charge that will literally bring down the mountain on the marauding bandits.GREEN FIRE is by no means a great movie but with lovely Cinemascope Cinematography, a spectacular mountain avalanche and a great Rozsa score there are, I suppose, worse ways to spend 100 minutes!.
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.
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.
Grace Kelly is the most beautiful and least probable owner of a tropical empire you've ever seen.
Paul Douglas is always easy to identify with because he completely lacks any of the social graces.
There is also a love triangle of sorts.This one is set in Colombia, South America, and the idea is to find the emeralds in an old mine that the conquistadores first opened.
Stewart Granger is the mining engineer, Paul Douglas his partner and best friend.
Granger is presented as a lovable rogue who cons his buddy into staying on for one more adventure.Nearby to their mine is a large coffee plantation, owned by Grace Kelly's character and her brother.
The brother is young ands restless and doesn't care "beans" about coffee, which of course makes him a great patsy for Granger to con into backing the mining operation.Granger and Kelly fall in love, but she is afraid he will be ever the wanderer and she's firmly rooted to her plantation.
Granger becomes more and more ruthless in his pursuit of the emeralds - first alienating his friend Douglas, then Grace and eventually his actions endanger the lives of everyone in the region, and may destroy the plantation.
But of course it all works out in the end, he comes to his senses, regains his moral balance and kisses the girl in the rainstorm at the end of the film.A very routine plot line, set in what was then a rather exotic locale.
Grace Kelly is lovely as always, but not very convincing in the role - she just never really was the "outdoors type".The film is shot in beautiful widescreen color, some location shooting seems to have taken place, but most of it was on very nicely done sets and backlots.At 1 hour and 40 minutes, the film tells its story pretty briskly with not much extraneous material.It's not a timeless classic, but it is a good example of typical 1950's adventure films, and is entertaining enough to watch once every few years..
There are going to be a lot of comparisons to "King Soloman's Mines" because of the presence of leading man Stewart Granger and the same director.
However, I also saw in it a more glamorous version of "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre", with Granger, Paul Douglas and John Erickson equivalent to "Sierra Madre's" Humphrey Bogart, Walter Huston and Tim Holt, if a bit toned down compared to that outstanding adventure film's cast.
Attacked by the bandits at the beginning of the film, he manages to survive, and is taken to the home of lovely coffee plantation owner Grace Kelly whom he is instantly smitten with.
Returning to Kelly's plantation after briefly leaving to bring his partner (Douglas) back with him, Granger finds himself the victim of the title, "Green Fire", which translates as the greed the earlier conquistadors fell victim to as their findings increased.
Other than this film, she "graced" audiences with her presence in Hitchcock's "Rear Window" and "Dial M For Murder" and her Oscar Winning turn in "The Country Girl".
Granger is essentially the same character he was in "King Soloman's Mines".
Acting honors go to Paul Douglas as the good-hearted seemingly brutish partner who falls in love unrequitably with Kelly.
For once, I'd like to see a film where the not so good looking hero ends up with the beauty and the hunk (Granger, whose character is only snapped out of his greed by impending tragedy) gets sent packing.
In the same year that she garnered the Oscar for "The Country Girl," Grace Kelly made this 1954 film set in Colombia.A tale of finding lost emeralds, Stewart Granger finds them and encounters all sorts of difficulties in pursuing many more of these green emeralds- bandits, dangers working the mines, and his love interest, Kelly in the film.As always, there is a rich score by Miklos Rosza and when I heard parts of it, I thought I was hearing some chords from his great "Ben-Hur" scoring.It was also laughable that his partner, the usually gruff Paul Douglas, would make Douglas vie for Kelly's affection.
When Kelly's brother agrees to help Granger in his pursuit and is subsequently killed, a rift builds between the Granger-Kelly pursuit of the emeralds, as she becomes dead set against it.An adventurous film which was nicely handled..
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.