• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 839 0

among the Kikuyu and Somali tribesmen, there were a couple of big pluses from an adaptation point of view. Blixen’s memoirs were not narrative in any film sense, so we could speculate a lot. Her autobiographical writings were very self-analytical, which allowed us accurately into her heart and soul. And, of course, there was the bigness of the landscape, which created an extraordinary background for storytelling. It’s the kind of setting that amplifies everything, so you get power like a Shakespearean sonnet that seems small and yet has huge, huge resonance. I told Kurt, ‘We’re not into social history here, but every bit of it will tell the British colonial African story.’ ” Redford saw the risks of this kind of contextual storytelling. Referencing McCarthyism was one thing, but this was remote alien territory. “It didn’t faze me. I was as stimulated as Sydney. But I saw that risk of ‘America abroad’ films. Foreign culture has been historically difficult for American filmmakers. There’s often that ‘John Wayne abroad’ shallowness, which is the problem of one culture misinterpreting the subtleties of another. I thought the redeeming factor might be a damn good love story, which Sydney was so good at.”

The character of Karen Blixen intrigued Redford. Born into wealth, she had been spurned by her first love, but settled for his brother, Bror von Blixen-Finecke, who extravagantly invested her money in a plantation on the inhospitable slopes of the Ngong Hills near Nairobi. Bror hunted game while Karen dallied with Finch Hatton, another hunter who used the coffee plantation as a base between safaris. When Bror and Karen divorced, Finch Hatton refused marriage and died shortly thereafter in a plane crash. The intrigue in Blixen’s story centers on Finch Hatton’s true nature. According to Thurman’s biography, the evidence suggests Karen and Finch Hatton never made it to the bedroom; Blixen’s personal writings suggest otherwise, and there is evidence that she miscarried his child. Redford welcomed this ambiguity: “Firstly, it gives me, the actor, a wide range of possibilities in playing out the fantasy. But it’s also dynamic because the presence of Finch Hatton, historically and otherwise, becomes mystery incarnate. I thought he could be an interesting subject to portray.”

Pollack wasn’t troubled by the blank canvas. “Blixen hardly mentions Denys [in Out of Africa, published in 1937], but Kurt gathered enough from Judith and from another book by Errol Trzebinski on Finch Hatton to build this great, fated romance,” he said. To play Blixen, Pollack considered a variety of actresses. In the sixties, there had been talk of Greta Garbo playing the role, and Pollack felt that a strongly sexual actress was vital. When Meryl Streep was proposed by Universal, he demurred. Streep was brilliant, but not, he felt, sexy enough. The decision was reversed when Streep insisted on an interview and showed up in a low-cut blouse and a push-up bra. “I really needed no convincing,” he said. “She was our national treasure, and when we met, I understood that of course she could ooze sex when she chose to.” Streep’s involvement, too, was a further inducement for Redford. “It was always going to be the woman’s story. The bottom line was her suffering. She was a pioneer as much as Jeremiah Johnson. The hardship she endured, trying to manage a thousand native workers, struggling against the economic and cultural odds, was too much. But she never gave up. She was sustained with the hope of this phantom lover, Denys, to keep her going. Meryl found the role very touching, very worthwhile.”

Not everyone was equally confident about Redford playing Finch Hatton, the archetypal Englishman. The son of the thirteenth earl of Winchilsea, Finch Hatton was educated at Eton and Oxford and had served in the military in Egypt but was essentially a man of leisure, most comfortable sipping port on safari with the Prince of Wales. The leap for Redford was difficult, not least with the accent. But he resolved from the start to immerse himself in the Britishness. “I knew I