Customer Reviews

Green Fire [VHS]

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This dvd is produced in the best possible quality in 16:9,and the restored film looks fantastic with its sparkling colors! The cover looks wonderful too. Thankyou W.Bros for stylish artwork on the covers, when releasing classic movies! (This isnt always the case with other companys as you all know..)
"Green Fire" is not known as an ultimate classic, or a very great movie, but it is an expensive and entertaing hollywood adventure movie,in color, with a great cast. Its well made and a feast for your eyes, as theese color/scope productions all are..and there is Stewart Granger and Grace Kelly! Recommended!

Probably this is one of those films that would never be considered as a masterwork. But it is one of those films you always watch. Because it is pure entertaning. You have exotic locations, a hero, a heroine, the villian...

Again another technicolor adventure this time in Colombia. The perfect excuse to create a "typical" hacienda in the Hollywood way but with the usual good taste of that genious who was Ceddric Gibbons and see Miss Kelly wearing those outfits by Helen Rose

The great star here is, evidently Stewart Granger, playing a not , particularly nice hero. Let's face it if someone can play a hero who is not perfect is he. The problem is that Miss Kelly seems lost in the film. I mean, she is beautiful as always but her manners are sometimes annoying. She lacks the energy that Deborah Kerr would have given to the character.

This is another example of craftsmanship of studios in the 50's. It is a film for pure enjoyment.

In her brief but extremely successful film career spanning only six years Grace Kelly managed to fit in many great performances in such memorable efforts as "Mogambo", "Dial M For Murder", "Rear Window", "The Country Girl" and "High Society ". "Green Fire", co starring Stewart Granger was one of the few films she actually made at her home studio of MGM which in theory should have been the studio most suited to displaying her obvious talents to best advantage. MGM however seemed content to simply loan her out to other studios eager to hire the cool and sophisticated Miss Kelly for their major productions. This MGM effort "Green Fire", is certainly one of Grace Kelly's lesser efforts that was dismissed by the critics at the time of its release in 1954 despite it's box office success and is a film largely forgotten today when people think of the film work of Grace Kelly. However with the shades of "King Solomon's Mines", and "Elephant Walk", in its storyline and the splendid location photography resulting from a totally miserable location shoot in Colombia, the film has a lot of merits as a romantic action adventure. "Green Fire", while no masterpiece is an enjoyable mid fifties effort and it is interesting to see Grace Kelly in a very different type of role and location than one is used to seeing her in.

As "Green Fire", opens we find rugged mining engineer Rian Mitchell (Stewart Granger), discovering a lost emerald mine in the highlands of Colombia which had last been operated by the Spanish conquistadors. Rian is a man consumed by the quest for wealth however he has to contend with local bandits and a savage leopard which injury him and stop him from going any further with his mining plans. Taken to recuperate at the plantation home of local coffee grower Catherine Knowland (Grace Kelly), and her brother Donald (John Ericson), Rian manages to exercise his old ability to charm the womenfolk and a strong attraction develops between catherine and himself. At port however his partner Vic Leonard (Paul Douglas), is preparing to leave Colombia and Rian anxious to get his assistance to mine th eemeralds tricks him into staying and remianing his partner. returning to the mine Rian at first gets Catherine's cooperation and resumes his romantic overtures to her from where he had left off. However Rian's endless greed and drive to get the emeralds at any cost soon creates troubles as not only does he come into dangerous conflict with the chief of the local bandits who threatens Catherine at her home but he also takes Donald into the mining operation despite his complete lack of knowledge of mining operations, solely to obtain the avaliable numbers of workers on the plantation for his mining needs. Catherine and Rian then come into direct conflict with each other as the coffee harvest time arrives and she has few workers left and she finds her fields under threat of flooding from Rian's mining operations. When a tragic accident at the mine site kills Donald even Vic abandons his old friend and sets out to help Catherine with her harvesting all the while harbouring a passion for the beautiful young woman himself. It takes a final huge shot out between the bandits and Rian's men when Catherine and Vic do support him, for Rian to finally come to his senses and realise where he has gone wrong. At great risk to himself he sets in place a huge explosion of dynamite that not only diverts the water away from Catherine's plantation but also buryies the mine under tons of rubble from where it can no longer be reached. Having exorcised his demons for money Rian then reunites with a forgiving Catherine at the finale.

Despite the presense of such a world famous actress as Grace Kelly, "Green Fire", really is Stewart Granger's film and in a way provides him with a welcome change of pace from many of the stiff costume epics that he was ploughing his way through in the mide '50's. Here he is all he-man and certainly con-man as well and actually he does good work as the emerald hungry miner who'll stop at nothing to get what he wants. Granger certainly never looked better than he does here in "Green Fire", and although he is certainly not the most famous of Grace Kelly's leading men the pair have a reasonably good, although not magical chemistry on screen. Grace Kelly quite rightly had great dissatisfaction with the roles that her home studio MGM were giving her and did almost all of her greatest films on loan out to studios such as Universal and Paramount. Here she has a fairly standard and rather colourless character to play and even though her Catherine is a woman who runs a coffee plantation largely on her own she in many ways is your standard romantic product of the fifties looking impossibly beautiful even in the rough conditions in Colombia. Veteran actor Paul Douglas has probably the most interesting character to play here as Rian's old mining buddy who is repeatedly loyal to his old friend despite his obvious failings but who goes over to Catherine's side when he sees what greed has done to his friend. His unrequited passion for the Grace Kelly character while doomed from the start actually adds some poignancy to his rough as nails character and he definately comes out the more likeable of the two male leads. Of course the real beauty and memorable qualities in "Green Fire" rest not in its fairly standard love story or th eperformances but in the totally magnificent location photography in the remote regions of Colombia where the plantation and mining scenes were shot. MGM really went all out in the photographic side of this story and apparently the cast and crew undured many weeks of miserable weather and conditions to give the film its very realistic look. The spectacular landslide that comes at the climax of the story is well worth waiting for and involves a huge rock fall done entirely with explosives and with none of the computer technology that would be employed to achieve the same effect nowadays.

While "Green Fire", would never be judged as great cinematic art or even a major effort in the catalogues of work of both Grace Kelly and Stewart Granger it is nevertheless a highly enjoyable adventure romance set in some spectacular scenery. Blessed as it is with some excellently staged special effects near the film's exciting climax and a grand shoot out that would do any western adventure story proud it makes great viewing for both action lovers as well as for those who like romances set in exotic places. "Green Fire"; while providing Grace Kelly with one of her less colourful roles does however capture her legendary beauty to perfection, the like of which seems to be largely absent in our current top actrsses. For love and adventure mixed in with human greed in the emerald mines of Colombia "Green Fire", is sure to provide great, but not classic entertainment from the days of the old Hollywood studio system. Enjoy.

I have seen all of Grace Kelly's movies, and this one stands out as by far the least appealing.
Grace's talents are wasted in the silly movie. Grace plays a lonely coffee plantation owner who meets Stewart Granger, a thoroughly awful cad, and we are supposed to believe that the two fall in love, even though there is zero chemistry between them.
Ms Kelly herself has stated publically her great dislike of this film, and I for one agree with her.

If you are a fan of Stewart Granger and Grace Kelly ,you will not
be disapointed either in the movie or the dvd quality

Meh script and zero chemistry b/w the leads buoyed by yummy Cinemascope location shooting in Colombia and decent score. Grace Kelly is embarrassingly miscast in a role that cries out for Deborah Kerr or Jean Simmons, and Stewart Granger is a dick. +1 point for action sequences well-staged by Marton, who would go on to be 2nd unit director in charge of the chariot scenes in BEN-HUR. Exciting mine cave-in, a river flood, and two landslides. Reasonably entertaining, but unmemorable. 5/10

Not bad for old movie takes me back . Need to get the one i was after King Solmons Mines with stewart granger.All good thanks

EXCEPT FOR THE stalwart presence of Stewart Granger, the etherial and luminous presence of Grace Kelly, and the everyman-still-can-be-romantic presence of Paul Douglas, this movie, "Green Fire", is a typical adventure-film of the 1950s. There are some exciting moments -- such as a raging, rising river, a mine cave-in, Mr. Granger's meeting, early on, with a hungry tiger, and some bandits -- but, except for fans of the above three stars, (and several more obscure actors, such as John Ericson, Robert Tafur, Carlita, Murvyn Vye, Jose Torvay, etc.), and perhaps fans of adventure films, this movie sadly has very little to offer.

Yes, there IS a rousing score, (by Miklos Rozsa, and which -- unlike other Rosza scores I have heard, does NOT, (mostly) contain the same Rosza melodies which are also used in other films....although if one listens closely, a tiny bit of the music accompanying 'Ben Hur's' march to the gallies can be heard at climactic moments). And yes, there IS some very clever dialogue / repartee, especially between Mr. Granger and Mr. Douglas, which is delivered in a very nice, natural manner. Unfortunately, there is also -- in this film from 1954 -- a bit of stereotyping, especially of the Columbian workmen, who are seen employed first on Catherine Knowland's (Grace Kelly's), and her brother Donald's (John Ericson's), plantation, then -- willy-nilly, without even a contract dispute -- are sent, en masse, to work in Rian X. Mitchell's (Stewart Granger's), and Vic Leonard's (Paul Douglas's), emerald mine. There ARE two brief camera-moments of Ms. Kelly raking through coffee beans, and Mr. Douglas placing a basket of these beans in a cleansing-bath, right alongside their respective female and male Native Columbian employees....but I waited in vain for a scene wherein just ONE of these hired workers would distinguish him or herself from the huge mass of these extras, by, perhaps, being caught reading a book or even looking at the pictures of a book, and so display some spark of individuality and intellectual intelligence. Perhaps I was watching the wrong movie -- maybe I should have been seeing "The Corn Is Green", with Bette Davis, instead -- but the "en masse" acting by most of the Native Columbian extras, (except for once in a while, like when one of the men says to Mr. Granger: "Patron! I have found an emerald! Come, please to see!"), did upset my 21st century sensibilities. (And probably upset Ms. Kelly as well. I have read that, later on, as Princess Grace, when a TV documentary was being made about her life in the palace, a director was upset to see White and Black children playing in the palace gardens together. "Please remove them for this filming, your highness," the film-maker said to Princess Grace. "They wouldn't like to see that in the Southern U.S.", he tried to explain to the princess. "Oh, but we do!" was her reply.
(Ms. Kelly had, years before, simply walked OUT of a famous New York Nightclub, when they would not admit Black entertainer Josephine Baker.) But the script for this film, 'Green Fire', was the script for this film, 'Green Fire', and it includes this rather
sad, stereotyped view of the Columbian "Native Indian" workmen and workwomen. So -- be warned....

One line in the film has Grace Kelly saying that she could, perhaps, "Wait for her Prince Charming" to ride up! This being 1954, one wonders if she had already met Prince Rainier? Or perhaps just her own, truly regal presence, (even before she officially became a Princess), inspired this interesting co-incidence of dialogue and future reality to be written into the script?

The action sequences ARE exciting. Doubly so when one realizes that 1954 was LONG before computer animation, and that all the dangerous segments had to be done live(!) (In one book -- Movie Icons: Grace Kelly, published by Taschen -- a comment by Grace Kelly is given, an insider's view of the production, which included a portion of the production crew getting lost and almost drowning during the making of this adventure saga!) Without computers, the actors -- and their stunt-doubles, and other stunt-people -- had to be very brave to make adventure-films of any sort!

Despite these somewhat exciting scenes, the occasional clever dialogue, the majesty of the Columbian wilderness, and the obvious effort of everyone involved with this production, the story is similar to many other adventure sagas.

Thus, again -- except for fans of the stars of rhis film, and/or fans of adventure films, in general -- this is a typical A- film from Hollywood. (Being an ardent Grace Kelly fan, I AM glad I saw this movie. But, unlike most of her other films -- one time is enough to sit through 'Green Fire' -- even for me.

When I ordered this DVD I was expecting a fine performance by Grace Kelly in a relatively weak film. So when I pushed play I was ready for a bomb with a sweet touch of Grace and suddenly I found myself enjoying everything about it. All the actors were good, the story was simple but engaging, and the action sequences by 1954 standards were spectacular. After The End popped up on the screen I found myself rather satisfied with this hard-to-find pricey purchase. If you're a fan of Grace Kelly or King Solomon's Mines, you will enjoy this. Hurry and order before it goes out of print! You know it will in a couple of years at most... Then you'll have to pay twice as much for it used.

IN 1954 MGM sent their cameras to Colombia,South America,for this very pleasant adventure movie. Although not a masterpiece, the beautiful locations helped a rather mild story about emerald fever. Stewart GRANGER and Paul DOUGLAS are quite convincing as the mining buddies, but Grace KELLY seems bored and not interested by her role through most of the film, wearing gloves in a coffee plantation(in Colombia, with an average temperature of 110°in the shade !!!) and changing dresses (created by Helen ROSE, of course !)in pratically every scene !!! Well that was part of Hollywood Magic, I guess...The DVD from WB Archive Collection is in very good shape, in Widescreen, Stereo sound and color by Eastmancolor. The impressive music is from the talented MIKLOS ROZSA...Who could ask for more ? Thank you again, AMAZON !!!!!!!!