The Macomber Affair


The Macomber Affair is a 1947 movie set in British East Africa concerning a fatal triangle involving a frustrated wife, a weak husband, and the professional hunter who comes between them. The film was distributed by United Artists and directed by Zoltan Korda, and features Gregory Peck, Joan Bennett, and Robert Preston.
The screenplay was written by Casey Robinson and Seymour Bennett and adapted by Bennett and Frank Arnold, based on "The Short Happy Life of Francis Macomber", the 1936 Ernest Hemingway short story.
The film was rereleased in 1952 by Lippert Pictures as The Great White Hunter.

Plot

The film opens in the Kenya Colony of British East Africa. Distraught American woman Margaret "Margot" Macomber is unhappily married to her American husband Francis Macomber. As their plane lands in Nairobi, Kenya, accompanied by Robert Wilson, an English big-game hunter, Francis is dead from a gunshot wound to the back of his head.
The film then pans back in time to before Francis Macomber's injury. Francis and Robert meet at the Norfolk Hotel to plan their safari over a whiskey. Then the story begins chronologically.
What happened was this: Francis, a wealthy man, has alienated his wife Margot with his displays of cowardice and physical delicateness while on safari. Margaret is attracted to Robert so, to prove his masculinity, Francis sets out to kill a lion. He succeeds only in wounding it. Robert insists the animal must be tracked and killed so it will not suffer. When the wounded lion charges, Francis runs and Robert must shoot it. Francis is repeatedly, and accidentally, emasculated by Robert throughout the day. A furious Margot humiliates her husband by kissing Robert on the lips.
As the couple's animosity grows, Francis is cruel and abusive to an African servant and Robert has to restrain him. The next morning, Francis wounds a cape buffalo with a courageous shot, comes to terms with his physical weaknesses, reconciles with Wilson, and thereby becomes a man. When the wounded cape buffalo charges and is not immediately dropped by shots from Macomber and Wilson, Margot takes aim and shoots; but her bullet strikes Francis and he falls dead. Robert tries to get her to admit that the shot was accidental as Margot prepares to go on trial. It is left unclear whether she intentionally shot her husband or merely feels guilt that the accident validated what was in her heart.

Cast

, in The New York Times, said the film, except for the beginning and the end, was a "quite credible screen telling" of a short story Hemingway felt was one of his best. Crowther also said that "it makes for a tight and absorbing study of character on the screen" if you ignore what the producers added at the beginning and the end. Crowther's review opined that "the contrived conclusion that the guide has fallen in love with the dame and that possibly the shooting was accidental is completely stupid and false".