Out of Africa is a 1985 romantic drama film directed and produced by Sydney Pollack, and starring Robert Redford and Meryl Streep. The film is based loosely on the autobiographical book Out of Africa written by Isak Dinesen (the pseudonym of the author Karen Blixen), which was published in 1937, with additional material from Dinesen's book Shadows on the Grass and other sources. This film received 28 film awards, including seven Academy Awards.

The book was adapted into a screenplay by the writer Kurt Luedtke, and directed by the American Sydney Pollack. Streep played Karen Blixen; Redford played Denys Finch Hatton; and Klaus Maria Brandauer played Baron Bror Blixen. Others in the film included Michael Kitchen as Berkeley Cole; Malick Bowens as Farah; Stephen Kinyanjui as the Chief; Michael Gough as Lord Delamere; Suzanna Hamilton as Felicity, and the model Iman as Mariammo.

Plot[link]

The story begins in 1913 in Denmark, when Karen Dinesen (a wealthy but unmarried woman) asks her friend Baron Bror Blixen (Klaus Maria Brandauer) to enter into a marriage of convenience with her. Although Bror is a member of the aristocracy he is no longer financially secure, therefore agrees to the marriage and the two of them plan to move to Africa to begin a dairy farm.

Upon moving to British East Africa, Karen marries Bror in a brief ceremony, thus becoming Baroness Blixen. She meets and befriends various other colonial residents of the country, most of whom are British. She also meets Denys Finch Hatton (Robert Redford), a local big-game hunter with whom she develops a close friendship. However, things turn out differently for her than anticipated, since Bror has used her money to purchase a coffee plantation rather than a dairy farm. He also shows little inclination to put any real work into it, preferring instead to become a game hunter. Although theirs was a marriage of convenience, Karen does eventually develop feelings for Bror, but is distressed when she learns of his extramarital affairs. To make matters worse, Karen contracts syphilis from her philandering husband (at the time a very dangerous disease) and is forced to return to Denmark for a long and difficult period of treatment using the then-new medicine Salvarsan. Bror agrees to look after the plantation in her absence.

After she has recovered and returns to Africa, the First World War is drawing to an end. However, it becomes clear that her marriage to the womanizing Bror has not changed and she eventually asks him to move out of their house. Her friendship with Denys then develops further and the two eventually become lovers. However, despite many unsuccessful attempts to turn their affair into a lasting relationship, she realizes that Denys is as impossible to own or tame as Africa itself. Denys prefers the simple, African customs of the free, nomadic life of the Maasai tribe on the open landscape, rather than the European customs of luxury, ownership and titles. Although he moves into Karen's house, he criticizes her desire to "own" things; even people, refuses to commit to marriage or give up his free lifestyle and tells her that he will not love her more just because of a piece of paper. Karen begrudgingly accepts the situation. No longer able to have children of her own due to the effects of the syphilis, decides to open a school to teach reading, writing, arithmetic and also some European customs to the African tribal children of the area. However, her coffee plantation runs into financial difficulties and she is forced to rely on bank loans to make ends meet. Although it has taken years to cultivate, the plantation finally yields a good harvest, but a devastating fire breaks out on the plantation and the crop and all of the factory equipment are destroyed.

Now broke, and with her relationship with Denys over, Karen prepares to leave Africa to return home to Denmark, just as British East Africa is becoming Kenya Colony. She arranges to sell everything that she owns and empties the house of all her luxurious items for a rummage sale. In the now empty house, Denys visits her that night and the two of them have one last dance. He promises to return in a few days, to fly her to Mombasa in his biplane to begin her journey home. However, Denys never returns and Karen is told that his plane has crashed and he has been killed. Her loss now complete, Karen attends his funeral in the Ngong Hills. With Denys gone, Karen's head servant, Farah, takes her to the station, for the train to Mombasa.

Karen later becomes an author and a storyteller, writing about her experiences and letters in Africa, though she never returned there.

Cast[link]

• Robert Redford - Denys Finch Hatton
• Meryl Streep - Karen Blixen
• Klaus Maria Brandauer - Bror Blixen/Hans Blixen
• Michael Kitchen - Berkeley Cole
• Shane Rimmer - Belknap
• Malick Bowens - Farah
• Joseph Thiaka - Kamante
• Stephen Kinyanjui - Chief Kinanjui
• Michael Gough - Lord Delamere
• Suzanna Hamilton - Felicity
• Rachel Kempson - Lady Belfield
• Graham Crowden - Lord Belfield
• Benny Young - Minister
• Leslie Phillips - Sir Joseph (this was presumably meant to be Sir Joseph Aloysius Byrne, who took office as the Governor in early 1931)
• Annabel Maule - Lady Byrne
• Iman - Mariammo

Production[link]

The film tells the story as a series of six loosely coupled episodes from Karen's life, intercut with her narration. The final two narrations, the first a reflection on Karen's experiences in Kenya and the second a description of Denys's grave, were taken from her book Out of Africa, while the others have been written for the film in imitation of her very lyrical writing style. The pace of this film is often rather slow, reflecting Blixen's book, "Natives dislike speed, as we dislike noise..."^[3]

Out of Africa was filmed using descendants of several people of the Kikuyu tribe who are named in the book, near the actual Ngong Hills outside Nairobi, but not inside of Karen's (second) three-bedroom house "Mbagathi" (now the Karen Blixen Museum). The filming took place in her first house "Mbogani", close to the museum, which is a dairy today. A substantial part of the filming took place in the Scott house, which is still occupied. The scenes set in Denmark were actually filmed in Surrey, England.

Differences between the film and real life events[link]

This film quotes the start of the book, "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills" [p. 3], and Denys recites, "He prayeth well that loveth well both man and bird and beast" from The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which becomes the epitaph inscribed on Finch-Hatton's grave marker [p. 370].

This film differs significantly from the book, leaving out the devastating locust swarm, some local shootings, and Karen's writings about the German army. The production also downplays the size of her 4,000 acres (16 km²) farm, with 800 Kikuyu workers and an 18-oxen wagon. Scenes show Karen as owning only one dog, but actually, she had two similar dogs named Dawn and Dusk.

The film also takes liberties with Karen's and Denys's romance. They met at a hunting club, not in the plains. Denys was away from Kenya for two years on military assignment in Egypt, which is not mentioned. Denys took up flying and began to lead safaris after he moved in with Karen. The film also ignores the fact that Karen was pregnant at least once with Denys's child, but she suffered from miscarriages. Furthermore, Denys was decidedly English, but this fact was downplayed by the hiring of the actor Robert Redford, an inarguably All-American actor who had previously worked with Pollack. When Redford accepted the contract to play Finch Hatton, he did so fully intending to play him as an Englishman. This conception was later nixed by the director Sydney Pollack. Pollack thought that this would become too distracting for the audiences, with hearing Redford speak in an English accent. In fact, Redford reportedly had to re-record some of his lines from early takes in the filming, in which he still spoke with a trace of English accent.

The title scenes of the film show the main railway, from Mombasa to Nairobi, as travelling through the Kenyan Rift Valley, on the steep back side of the actual Ngong Hills. However, the real railway track is located on the higher, opposite side of the Ngong Hills. The passenger car was actually a small combination office / sleeper that was originally used by supervisors during the building of the Uganda Railway and was the actual car from which a man was taken and killed by a marauding lion.

Soundtrack[link]

The music for Out of Africa was composed and conducted by veteran English composer John Barry. The score included a number of outside pieces such as Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and African traditional songs. The soundtrack garnered Barry an Oscar for Best Original Score and sits in fifteenth place in the American Film Institute's list of top 25 American film scores.^[4] The soundtrack was released through MCA Records and features 12 tracks of score at a running time of just over thirty-three minutes. A rerecording conducted by Joel McNeely and performed by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra was released in 1997 through Varèse Sarabande and features eighteen tracks of score at a running time just under thirty-nine minutes.^[5]

MCA Records release

1. "Main Title (I Had a Farm in Africa)" (3:14)
2. "I'm Better at Hello (Karen's Theme I)" (1:18)
3. "Have You Got a Story For Me" (1:14)
4. "Concerto For Clarinet and Orchestra in A (K. 622)" (2:49) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, performed by the Academy of St Martin in the Fields
5. "Safari" (2:44)
6. "Karen's Journey/Siyawe" (4:50) contains traditional African music
7. "Flying Over Africa" (3:25)
8. "I Had a Compass From Denys (Karen's Theme II)" (2:31)
9. "Alone on the Farm" (1:56)
10. "Let the Rest of the World Go By" (3:17) - by Ernest R. Ball and J. Keirn Brennan
11. "If I Know a Song of Africa (Karen's Theme III)" (2:12)
12. "End Title (You Are Karen)" (4:01)

Varèse Sarabande Re-Recording

1. "I Had a Farm (Main Title)" (3:12)
2. "Alone on the Farm" (1:00)
3. "Karen and Denys" (0:48)
4. "Have You Got a Story For Me" (1:21)
5. "I'm Better at Hello" (1:24)
6. "Mozart: clarinet concerto in A Major: K622 (Adagio)" (7:39) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
7. "Karen's Journey Starts" (3:41)
8. "Karen's Journey Ends" (1:00)
9. "Karen's Return From Border" (1:33)
10. "Karen Builds a School" (1:19)
11. "Harvest" (2:02)
12. "Safari" (2:35)
13. "Flight Over Africa" (2:41)
14. "Beach at Night" (0:58)
15. "You'll Keep Me Then" (0:58)
16. "If I Knew a Song of Africa" (2:23)
17. "You Are Karen M'Sabu" (1:17)
18. "Out of Africa (End Credits)" (2:49)

Technical notes[link]

In the Director's Notes on the DVD^[6] for The Interpreter, Sydney Pollack stated that he filmed Out of Africa and his later films of that decade in 1.85:1 matted widescreen; and that it "...probably was one I should have had in widescreen". By this he meant anamorphic 2.39:1 widescreen. In his director's notes, Pollack stated that prior to the filming of Out of Africa, he made motion pictures exclusively in the anamorphic 2.39:1 widescreen format and style, and that he did not resume the anamorphic 2.39:1 widescreen format until his movie, The Interpreter, in 2005.

In 1985, there were no steam locomotives still operational in Kenya. Therefore, the producers and their advisors decided to assemble a simulated steam train that was, instead, pushed from behind by an available diesel locomotive, which was directly behind the steam locomotive and disguised as a box car. Due to mechanical problems, this covering had to be disassembled and reassembled after repairs. The simulated steam locomotive burned rubber tires in its simulated boiler, and liquid oxygen was used as an oxidizer to give the appearance of a coal-fired boiler.

This replica of a steam locomotive - and also the passenger cars used during the filming - have been put on display in the Nairobi Railway Museum. The passenger car used by Streep's character was not a standard car but actually a supervisor's car from the days of the building of the East Africa Railway. This is exactly the same car mentioned in Patterson's "The Man-eaters of Tsavo" in which two of the three occupants were killed by a marauding lion. While formerly displayed in the museum, in its original colors and bearing a plaque referring to the event, the car is currently displayed using the later color scheme, as seen in the film. Due to daily rail traffic, the train footage had to be shot on an old spur line that had not been used for some thirty years.

Among the various props used in the movie, the compass that Redford gives to Streep was Denys Finch Hatton's actual compass. Unfortunately, it was stolen during the production. As guns (real, toys and replicas) are illegal in Kenya, Redford's papier mache pistol was confiscated at the end of production and has since been seen as a rental item in subsequent stage productions in Nairobi.

The film also features a de Havilland DH.60 Moth in the later scenes, the same type of airplane flown by Finch Hatton in real life.

Awards and honors[link]

Academy Awards

The film won seven Academy Awards and was nominated in a further four categories.^[7][8]

Won

• Best Picture (Sydney Pollack, Kim Jorgensen)
• Best Director (Sydney Pollack)
• Best Art Direction (Stephen Grimes, Josie MacAvin)
• Best Cinematography (David Watkin)
• Best Adapted Screenplay (Kurt Luedtke)
• Best Original Score (John Barry)
• Best Sound (Chris Jenkins, Gary Alexander, Larry Stensvold, Peter Handford)

Nominated

• Best Actress (Meryl Streep)
• Best Supporting Actor (Klaus Maria Brandauer)
• Costume Design (Milena Canonero)
• Film Editing (Fredric Steinkamp, William Steinkamp, Pembroke Herring, and Sheldon Kahn)

Golden Globes

The film won three Golden Globes (Best Picture, Supporting Actor, Original Score).

AFI

American Film Institute recognition

• 2002 AFI's 100 Years... 100 Passions #13
• 2005 AFI's 100 Years of Film Scores #15

References[link]

External links[link]

• Out of Africa at the Internet Movie Database
• Out of Africa at the TCM Movie Database
• Out of Africa at AllRovi
• Out of Africa at Box Office Mojo
• Out of Africa at Rotten Tomatoes

Out of Africa is a memoir by Isak Dinesen, a pen name used by the Danish author Baroness Karen von Blixen-Finecke. The book, first published in 1937, recounts events of the seventeen years when Blixen made her home in Kenya, then British East Africa. The book is a lyrical meditation on Blixen’s life on her coffee plantation, as well as a tribute to some of the people who touched her life there. It is also a vivid snapshot of African colonial life in the last decades of the British Empire. Blixen wrote the book in English and then translated it into Danish.

Background[link]

"I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills..."

Karen Blixen moved to British East Africa in late 1913, at the age of 28, to marry her second cousin, the Swedish Baron Bror von Blixen-Finecke, and make a life in the British colony known today as Kenya. The young Baron and Baroness bought farmland in the Ngong Hills about ten miles (16 km) southwest of Nairobi, which at the time was still shaking off its rough origins as a supply depot on the Uganda Railway.

The Blixens had planned to raise dairy cattle, but Bror developed their farm as a coffee plantation instead.^[1] It was managed by Europeans, including, at the start, Karen’s brother Thomas – but most of the labor was provided by “squatters.” This was the colonial term for local Kikuyu tribespeople who guaranteed the owners 180 days of labour in exchange for wages and the right to live and farm on the uncultivated lands^[2] which, in many cases, had simply been theirs before the British arrived and claimed them.^[3]

When the First World War drove coffee prices up, the Blixen family invested in the business, and in 1917 Karen and Bror expanded their holdings to six thousand acres (24 km²). The new acquisitions included the site of the house which features so prominently in Out of Africa.^[4]

The Blixens’ marriage started well – Karen and Bror went on hunting safaris which Karen later remembered as paradisiacal.^[5] But it was not ultimately successful: Bror, a talented hunter and a well liked companion, was an unfaithful husband and a poor businessman.^[6] In 1921 the couple separated, and in 1925 they were divorced; Karen took over the management of the farm on her own.

She was well suited to the work – fiercely independent and capable, she loved the land and liked her native workers. But the climate and soil of her particular tract was not ideal for coffee-raising; the farm endured several unexpected dry years with low yields, and the falling market price of coffee was no help.^[7] The farm sank further and further into debt until, in 1931, the family corporation forced her to sell it. The buyer, Remi Martin, who planned to carve it into residential plots, offered to allow Blixen to stay in the house. She declined, and returned to Denmark.^[4]

Blixen moved back to the family’s estate of Rungstedlund and lived with her mother; there she took up again the writing career that she had begun, but abandoned, in her youth. In 1934 she published a fiction collection, Nine Tales, now known as Seven Gothic Tales, and in 1937 she published her Kenyan memoir, Out of Africa. The book’s title was likely derived from the title of a poem, "Ex Africa," she had written in 1915, while recuperating in a Danish hospital from her fight with syphilis. The poem’s title is probably an abbreviation of the famous ancient Latin adage (credited to sages from Aristotle to Pliny to Erasmus) Ex Africa semper aliquid novi, which translates as “Out of Africa, always something new.”^[8]

Structure and style[link]

Out of Africa is divided into five sections, most of which are non-linear and seem to reflect no particular chronology. The first two focus primarily on Africans who lived or had business on the farm, and include close observations of native ideas about justice and punishment in the wake of a gruesome accidental shooting. The third section, called “Visitors to the Farm,” describes some of the more colourful local characters who considered Blixen’s farm to be a safe haven. The fourth, “From an Immigrant’s Notebook,” is a collection of short sub-chapters in which Blixen reflects on the life of a white African colonist.

In the fifth and final section, “Farewell to the Farm,” the book begins to take on a more linear shape, as Blixen details the farm’s financial failure, and the untimely deaths of several of her closest friends in Kenya. The book ends with the farm sold, and with Blixen on the Uganda Railway, heading toward the steamer on the coast, looking back and watching her beloved Ngong Hills diminish behind her.

Out of Africa has been noted for its melancholy and elegiac style – Blixen biographer Judith Thurman employs an African tribal phrase to describe it: “clear darkness.”^[9] It is not an insignificant fact that Blixen’s tales encompass the deaths of at least five of the important people in the book. As the chapters proceed, Blixen begins to meditate more plainly on her feelings of loss and nostalgia for her days in Africa. As she describes the economic realities of her failed business closing in on her, she comments wryly on her mixture of despair and denial, until the last days are upon her and she gives in to the inevitable.

But Blixen’s wistfulness is fueled and informed by a loss greater than her own farm: the loss of Kenya itself. In the first two decades of the 20th century, many of Kenya’s European settlers saw their colonial home as a kind of timeless paradise. One frequent explorer referred to the atmosphere as a “tropical, neo-lithic slumber.”^[10] President Theodore Roosevelt, who explored the region in 1909, compared it to “the late Pleistocene.”^[11]

Settlement was sparse; life followed the slow, dreamy rhythms of annual dry and rainy seasons. A few thousand European colonists, many of them well-educated Britons from the landed gentry, held dominion over vast plantation estates covering tens of thousands of acres. Their farms were home to herds of elephants and zebra, and dozens of giraffes, lions, hippos, leopards – to a culture accustomed to the traditional pleasures of European aristocrats, Kenya was a hunter’s dream. Although the colonists imposed British law and economic control upon this new domain, they saw themselves not as conquerors or oppressors, but as benign stewards of the land and its people. Blixen herself commented in 1960 that when she arrived in Kenya in 1914, “the highlands were in very truth the Happy Hunting Grounds… while the pioneers lived in guileless harmony with the children of the land.” ^[12]

This belief in Kenya as a pre-historic Utopia left its mark on its inhabitants (and remained an idealized world of the imagination even for generations that came after). But by the time that Blixen was finishing the manuscript for Out of Africa at the age of 51, the Kenya protectorate of her younger years was a thing of the past. Aggressive agricultural development had spread the colony’s human footprint far out into the game country; many of the new farmers were middle-class retired Army officers recruited by a government settlement programme after World War I. The popularity of hunting safaris, especially after Roosevelt’s world-famous journey in 1909, had depleted the big herds precipitously. And as the clouds of war threatened Europe once again, the colony became as famous (or infamous) for the misbehavior of the wife-swapping, hard-partying Happy Valley set as it was for being a dreamy horizon of Empire.

In Baroness Blixen’s descriptions of the Africa she knew, a note of mourning for this irretrievably lost world frequently colours her stories of magnificent isolation and the redemptive qualities of a life lived in partnership with nature.^[13]

Themes[link]

At first glance much of the book, especially the section titled “From an Immigrant’s Notebook,” seems to be a string of loosely related episodes organized from Blixen’s memory, or perhaps from notes she made while in Africa (indeed, in one of the early chapters she describes discussing the beginning of her work on the book with her young cook Kamante).

A closer look, however, yields a more formal approach.

Trials[link]

Blixen examines the details and ethical implications of two separate “trials.” The first is African: a gathering of tribesmen on her farm to adjudicate the case of a Kikuyu child who accidentally killed one playmate and maimed another with a shotgun. This process seems largely devoid of Western-style moral or ethical considerations: most of the energy expended in deliberations is directed at determining the proper amount of reparation the perpetrator’s father must pay, in livestock, to the families of the victims. Later, Blixen describes a British colonial criminal trial in Nairobi: the defendant is a European settler who is accused of causing, by intention or indifference, the death of a disobedient African servant named Kitosch. Blixen does not directly compare the two proceedings, but the contrasts are stark.

Contrasts and opposites[link]

These two trials, separated by most of the bulk of the book, may also be part of a deeper exploration by Blixen into one of her pet notions: the “Unity” of contrasts. Perhaps her greatest elucidation of this idea comes in Shadows on the Grass, which she wrote thirty years after leaving Kenya:

Her life in Africa offered her no shortage of such contrasting dualities: town and country, dry season and rainy season, Muslim and Christian. But her most constant theme is the contrast of African and European.

Africans[link]

Much of Blixen’s energy in Out of Africa is spent trying to capture for the reader the character of the Africans who lived on or near her farm, and the efforts of European colonists (herself included) to co-exist with them.

Although she was unavoidably in the position of landholder, and wielded great power over her tenants, Blixen was known in her day for her respectful and admiring relationships with Africans^[15] – a connection that made her increasingly suspect among the other colonists as tensions grew between Europeans and Africans.^[16] “We were good friends,” she writes about her staff and workers. “I reconciled myself to the fact that while I should never quite know or understand them, they knew me through and through.”^[17]

But Blixen does understand – and thoughtfully delineates – the differences between the culture of the Kikuyu who work her farm and who raise and trade their own sheep and cattle, and that of the Maasai, a volatile warrior culture of nomadic cattle-drovers who live on a designated tribal reservation south of the farm’s property. Blixen also describes in some detail the lives of the Somali Muslims who immigrated south from Somaliland to work in Kenya, and a few members of the substantial Indian merchant minority which played a large role in the colony’s early development.

Her descriptions of Africans and their behavior or customs sometimes employ some of the abrasive racial language of her time, but her portraits are unusually frank and accepting, and are generally free of the period’s European preconceptions of Africans as savages or simpletons. She saw in the ancient tribal customs a logic and dignity which many of her fellow colonists did not. Some of those customs, such as the valuation of daughters based on the dowry they will bring at marriage, seem ugly to Western eyes; Blixen’s voice in describing these traditions is largely free of judgment.

She was admired in return by many of her African employees and acquaintances, who saw her as a thoughtful and wise figure, and turned to her for the resolution of many disputes and conflicts.

Europeans[link]

The other characters who populate Out of Africa are the Europeans – colonists as well as some of the wanderers who stopped in Kenya. Foremost among them is Denys Finch Hatton, who was for a time Blixen’s lover after her separation and then her divorce from her husband. Finch Hatton, like Blixen herself, was known to feel close to his African acquaintances – as, indeed, do virtually all of the Europeans for whom Blixen expresses real regard in Out of Africa.

Blixen limits most of her reflections to those Europeans who were her frequent or favorite guests, such as a man she identifies only as “Old Knudsen,” a down-and-out Danish fisherman who invites himself to take up residence on her farm, and then abruptly dies there.

Edward, Prince of Wales, also makes an appearance; his 1928 visit to the colony was an event of the utmost importance in Kenya’s aristocratic social circles (the Governor of the colony ordered the streets of Nairobi repaved for the occasion).^[18]

Major characters[link]

• The Hon. Denys Finch Hatton – Blixen’s portrait of Finch Hatton is as a kind of philosopher king, a man of exceptional erudition and natural grace, at one with nature, who fit in everywhere and nowhere: “When he came back to the farm, it gave out what was in it – it spoke… When I heard his car coming up the drive, I heard, at the same time, all the things of the farm telling what they really were.”^[19] Such glowing reports of the aristocratic Finch Hatton are not uncommon; by all accounts he radiated, from a young age, a kind of warmth and serenity that many people found irresistible. But while Blixen is generally believed to have been Finch Hatton's lover, and she writes of him with unbridled adoration, in Out of Africa at least she refrains from ever clearly defining the nature of their relationship. Finch Hatton came from a titled British family and was educated at Eton and Oxford. But he turned his back on his British noblesse, and came to Africa in 1911, at the age of 24.^[20] He began as a farmer and trader, but later became a white hunter – and he was well liked by many Africans. Blixen met Finch Hatton at a dinner in 1918. He was, to judge by Blixen’s correspondence as well as some passages from Out of Africa, the great love of her life. She was bound, she wrote to her brother, "to love the ground he walks upon, to be happy beyond words when he is here, and to suffer worse than death many times when he leaves."^[21] After August 1923, when not on safari, Finch Hatton used Blixen’s farm as his home base.^[22] Like her, Finch Hatton was a lifelong non-conformist, and it was apparently a cause of great heartache to her that he resisted her efforts to form a more permanent “partnership.”^[23] Blixen is believed to have miscarried at least one child fathered by him.^{[citation needed]} From late 1930 to early 1931, as their romance was ending, Finch Hatton took Blixen flying over her farm and other parts of Africa in his de Havilland Gipsy Moth biplane, which she described as “the most transporting pleasure of my life on the farm.”^[24] In May 1931, when their affair was likely over for good, Finch Hatton was killed when his Gypsy Moth crashed after takeoff at the Voi aerodrome; those events are recounted in the last chapters of Out of Africa.
• Farah Aden – When Blixen first met Farah, she mistook him for an Indian. However, Farah was a Somali of the Habr Yunis, a tribe of fierce, handsome, and shrewd traders and cattle-dealers.^[25] It was common among the British colonists of the early period to hire Somalis as major-domos. Most Somalis were, by the accounts of their employers, highly organized, effective managers. In Shadows on the Grass, Blixen would describe the Somalis as aristocrats among the Africans, "superior in culture and intelligence", and well matched in terms of hauteur with the Europeans they chose to serve.^[26] Farah had been hired to work for Bror Blixen as a steward, and Bror sent him to Mombasa to greet Karen when she got off the steamer from England. According to Dinesen's biographer Judith Thurman, “it was upon meeting Farah in Mombasa that Dinesen’s Vita Nuova (new life) truly began.”^[25] Blixen entrusted Farah with the farm’s cash flow, and eventually with her complete trust. Farah shared her daily life, mediated her relations with the Africans, and relieved her of many practical burdens. The two would grow exceedingly close, with Blixen herself describing their relationship as a "creative unity".^[27] The chapter in which Blixen describes the sale of her farm is titled, “Farah and I Sell Out.” After Blixen and her husband divorced, Farah remained loyal to her, sometimes leaving Karen's service temporarily to work on one of Bror's safaris.^[28]
• Kamante Gatura – A young boy crippled by running sores when he enters Blixen’s life, Kamante was successfully treated by the doctors at the “Scotch" Christian mission near the farm, and thereafter served Blixen as a cook and as a wry, laconic commentator on her choices and her lifestyle. There is a strong suggestion that Blixen and Kamante were well suited as friends because both were loners and skeptics, who looked at their own cultures with the critical eye of the misfit.
• The Hon. Berkeley Cole – Cole was, like Finch Hatton, a British expatriate improvising a charmed life among the colony’s well-to-do. Reginald Berkeley Cole (1882-1925), an Anglo-Irish aristocrat from Ulster (being a son of The 4th Earl of Enniskillen), was a veteran of the Boer War, a possessor of a sly wit who affected a dandy’s persona in the Kenya colony. A brother-in-law of The 3rd Baron Delamere, he was also a founder of the Muthaiga Club, the legendary private Nairobi enclave of the colony’s demi-monde.^[29] Cole was a close friend of Finch Hatton and the two men supplied Blixen with much of the wine she served on her farm. She famously described him drinking a bottle of champagne every morning at eleven, and complaining if the glasses were not of the finest quality. Cole died in 1925 of heart failure, at the age of 43. “An epoch in the history of the Colony came to an end with him,” Blixen wrote. “The yeast was out of the bread of the land.”^[30]
• Kinanjui – Kinanjui was “the big chief” of Blixen’s neighborhood – “a crafty old man, with a fine manner, and much real greatness to him,” Blixen writes.^[31] British colonial authorities had appointed him the highest-ranking chief among the Kikuyu in Blixen’s region because they couldn’t get along with his predecessor;^[31] as such he was a significant authority figure for the Kikuyu who lived on her farm. Upon Blixen’s arrival in Kenya, it was Kinanjui who assured her that she would never lack for laborers. Although the book does not fail to point out some of Kinanjui’s vanities (such as the large automobile he buys from an American diplomat), Blixen depicts the king as a figure with a deep sense of his own dignity and royal presence. Kinanjui is also one of the figures in the story who dies toward the end of the memoir, leaving her – as do the deaths of Cole and Finch Hatton – ever more isolated and uncertain.

Conspicuously absent from the stories in Out of Africa is any explicit appearance by Blixen’s husband, Bror von Blixen-Finecke. Blixen refers to her younger days on shooting safaris, safaris which she is known to have taken with Bror, but doesn’t mention him in that context. There is a reference or two to “my husband,”^[32] but she never uses his first name. Although the Blixens remained friendly through their separation and divorce, Bror’s associations with other women caused Karen embarrassment. Decorum drove her to withdraw from social events where Bror would be present with a mistress (one of whom became his next wife), and she was, privately, resentful of these social strictures.

[edit] Shadows on the Grass

In 1961, at the age of 76, Blixen published Shadows on the Grass, a short compendium of further recollections about her days in Africa. Many of the people and the events from Out of Africa appear again on these pages. Due to its brevity and its closely related content, Shadows on the Grass has in recent years been published as a combined volume with Out of Africa.

Adaptations[link]

Sydney Pollack directed a film adaptation in 1985, starring Meryl Streep, Robert Redford and Klaus Maria Brandauer.

The film is less a direct adaptation of the book than it is a love story. Written by Kurt Luedtke and drawing heavily on two biographies of Blixen, it is a compressed chronological recounting of Blixen’s Kenyan years that focuses particularly on her troubled marriage and her affair with Finch Hatton. Some of Blixen’s more poetic narration and a few episodes from the book, do appear in the film, such as Blixen’s work running supply wagons during the war, the farm’s fire and its financial troubles, and her struggles to find a home for her Kikuyu squatters. Most of the main characters are identified by their real names, though substantial liberties are taken with some of the details.

Out of Africa won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay Adaptation.

See also[link]

Novels portal

• Memoir

Notes[link]

External links[link]

• Out of Africa, at Spark Notes
• Out of Isak Dinesen The true story behind Out of Africa
• Karen Blixen-Isak Dinesen Site
• Photos of the first American edition of Out of Africa
• Out of Africa, Literapedia notes.

Robert Redford
Robert Redford in 2006
Born	Charles Robert Redford, Jr. (1936-08-18) August 18, 1936 (age 75) Santa Monica, California, United States
Occupation	Actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist
Years active	1959–present
Spouse	Lola van Wagenen (1958–1985; divorced) Sibylle Szaggars (2009–present)[1]
Children	Scott (deceased), Shauna, Jamie, Amy

Charles Robert Redford, Jr. (born August 18, 1936),^[2] better known as Robert Redford, is an American actor, film director, producer, businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, and founder of the Sundance Film Festival. He has received two Oscars: one in 1981 for directing Ordinary People, and one for Lifetime Achievement in 2002. In 2010 he was awarded French Knighthood in the Legion d'Honneur. At the height of his fame in the 1970s and 1980s, he was often described as one of the world's most attractive men and remains one of the most popular movie stars. His popular films include Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), Downhill Racer (1969), Jeremiah Johnson (1972), The Candidate (1972), The Sting (1973), The Way We Were (1973), The Great Gatsby (1974), Three Days of the Condor (1975), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), All the President's Men (1976), A Bridge Too Far (1977), The Natural (1984), Out of Africa (1985), Sneakers (1992), Indecent Proposal (1993),The Last Castle and Spy Game (2001). As a filmmaker, his notable films include Ordinary People (1980), The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), A River Runs Through It (1992), Quiz Show (1994), The Horse Whisperer (1998) and The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000).

Early life[link]

Redford's family moved to Van Nuys while his father worked in El Segundo.^[3] He attended Van Nuys High School, where he was classmates with baseball player Don Drysdale.^[3] He has described himself as having been a "bad" student, finding inspiration outside the classroom, and being interested in art and sports.^[3] He hit tennis balls with Pancho Gonzales at the Los Angeles Tennis Club to warm him up. After high school, he attended the University of Colorado for a year and a half,^[3] where he was a member of the Kappa Sigma Fraternity.^[4] While there, he worked at the restaurant/bar The Sink; a painting of his likeness is prominent in the bar's murals.^[5] After being asked to leave the University of Colorado, he traveled in Europe, living in France, Spain, and Italy.^[3] He later studied painting at the Pratt Institute in Brooklyn and took classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in New York City.^[3]

Career[link]

Television[link]

Redford's career — like that of almost all major stars who emerged in the 1950s — began in New York, where an actor could find work both in television and on stage. Starting in 1959, he appeared as a guest star on numerous programs, including The Untouchables, Whispering Smith, Perry Mason, Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Route 66, Dr. Kildare, Playhouse 90, Tate, and The Twilight Zone, among others. He earned an Emmy nomination as Best Supporting Actor for his performance in The Voice of Charlie Pont (ABC, 1962). One of his last television appearances was on October 7, 1963, on Breaking Point, an ABC medical drama about psychiatry.

Theater[link]

Redford's Broadway debut was in a small role in Tall Story (1959), followed by parts in The Highest Tree (1959) and Sunday in New York (1961). His biggest Broadway success was as the stuffy newlywed husband of Elizabeth Ashley in Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park (1963).

Film[link]

Redford in Barefoot in the Park, 1967

While still largely an unknown, Redford made his screen debut in War Hunt (1962), co-starring with John Saxon in a film set during the last days of the Korean War. This film also marked the debuts of director Sydney Pollack, with whom Redford would often collaborate in the near future, and actor Tom Skerritt. After his Broadway success, he was cast in larger feature roles in movies. He was cast alongside screen legend Alec Guinness in the war comedy Situation Hopeless ... But Not Serious, in which he played a soldier who has to spend years of his life hiding behind enemy lines. In Inside Daisy Clover (1965), which won him a golden globe for best new star, he played a bisexual movie star who marries starlet Natalie Wood, and rejoined her along with Charles Bronson for Pollack's This Property Is Condemned (1966) — again as her lover, though this time in a film which achieved even greater success. The same year saw his first teaming with Jane Fonda, in Arthur Penn's The Chase. This film marked the only time Redford would star with Marlon Brando. Fonda and Redford were paired again in the popular big screen version of Barefoot in the Park (1967)^[3] and were again co-stars much later in Pollack's The Electric Horseman (1979).

After this initial success, Redford became concerned about his blond male stereotype image and turned down roles in Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? and The Graduate. Redford found the property he was looking for in George Roy Hill's Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969), scripted by William Goldman, in which he was paired for the first time with Paul Newman.^[3] The film was a huge success and made him a major bankable star,^[3] cementing his screen image as an intelligent, reliable, sometimes sardonic good guy.

Redford suffered through a few films that did not achieve box office success during this time, including Downhill Racer (1969); Tell Them Willie Boy Is Here (1969); Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970), and The Hot Rock (1972). But his overall career was flourishing with the critical and box office hit Jeremiah Johnson (1972);^[3] the political satire The Candidate (1972); the hugely popular period drama The Way We Were (1973); and the biggest hit of his career; the blockbuster crime caper The Sting (1973), which became one of the top 20 highest grossing movies of all time when adjusted for inflation and for which he was also nominated for an Oscar.^[3]

Between 1974 and 1976, exhibitors voted Redford Hollywood's top box-office name.^[3] His hits included The Great Gatsby (1974), The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), and Three Days of the Condor (1975). The popular and acclaimed All the President's Men (1976), directed by Alan J. Pakula and scripted once again by Goldman, was a landmark film for Redford. Not only was he the executive producer and co-star, but the film's serious subject matter — the Watergate scandal — and its attempt to create a realistic portrayal of journalism also reflected the actor's offscreen concerns for political causes.^[3]

He also starred in a segment of the war film A Bridge Too Far (1977), the prison drama Brubaker (1980), playing a prison warden attempting to reform the system, and the fantasy baseball drama The Natural (1984).^[3] Redford continued his involvement in mainstream Hollywood movies, though with a newfound focus on directing. The first film he directed, Ordinary People, which followed the disintegration of an upper class American family after the death of a son, was one of the most critically and publicly acclaimed films of the decade, winning a number of Oscars, including the Academy Award for best director for Redford himself. His followup directorial project, The Milagro Beanfield War (1987), failed to generate the same level of attention. Sydney Pollack's Out of Africa (1985), with Redford in the male lead role opposite Meryl Streep, became an enormous critical and box office success and won seven Oscars including Best Picture, proving to be Redford's biggest success of the decade and Redford and Pollack's most successful of their six movies together.^[3] His next film, Legal Eagles (1986), was only a minor success at the box office.

Redford continued as a major star throughout the 1990s and 2000s. He released his third film as a director, A River Runs Through It, in 1992, which was a return to mainstream success for Redford as a director and brought a young Brad Pitt to greater prominence. 1993 brought Redford one of his most popular and recognised roles when he starred as a millionaire businessman who tests people's morals through bribery in Indecent Proposal, which became one of the year's biggest hits. He co-starred with Michelle Pfeiffer in the newsroom romance Up Close & Personal (1996), and with Kristin Scott Thomas in The Horse Whisperer (1998), which he also directed.^[3] Redford also continued work in films with political context, such as Havana (1990), playing Jack Weil, a professional gambler in 1959 Cuba during the Revolution, as well as Sneakers (1992), in which he co starred with the late River Phoenix among others.

He appeared as a disgraced Army general sent to prison in the political thriller The Last Castle (2001), directed by Rod Lurie, someone else with a strong interest in politics. In the same year, Redford reteamed with Brad Pitt for Spy Game, another success for the pair but with Redford switching this time from director to actor. Redford, a leading environmental activist, narrated the IMAX documentary Sacred Planet (2004), a sweeping journey across the globe to some of its most exotic and endangered places. In The Clearing (2004), a thriller co-starring Helen Mirren, Redford was a successful businessman whose kidnapping unearths the secrets and inadequacies that led to his achieving the American Dream.

Redford stepped back into producing with The Motorcycle Diaries (2004), a coming-of-age road film about a young medical student, Ernesto "Che" Guevera, and his friend Alberto Granado. It also explored political and social issues of South America that influenced Guevara and shaped his future. With five years spent in the film's making, Redford was credited by director Walter Salles for being instrumental in getting it made and released.

Back in front of the camera, Redford received good notices for his role in director Lasse Hallstrom's An Unfinished Life (2005) as a cantankerous rancher who is forced to take in his estranged daughter-in-law (Jennifer Lopez) — whom he blames for his son's death — and the granddaughter he never knew he had when they fled an abusive relationship. The film, which sat on the shelf for many months while its distributor Miramax was restructured, was generally dismissed as clichéd and overly sentimental. Meanwhile, Redford returned to familiar territory when he reteamed with Meryl Streep 22 years after they starred in Out of Africa, for his personal project Lions for Lambs (2007), which also starred fellow superstar Tom Cruise. After a great deal of hype, the film opened to mixed reviews and disappointing box office. Redford more recently signed on to direct and star in an update of The Candidate.^{[citation needed]}

Redford appears in the 2011 documentary Buck, where he discusses his experiences with title subject Buck Brannaman during the production of The Horse Whisperer in 1998.

Director[link]

Redford at the 1988 Cannes Film Festival

Redford had long harbored ambitions to work on both sides of the camera. As early as 1969, Redford had served as the executive producer for Downhill Racer.^[3] His first outing as director was in 1980's Ordinary People, a drama about the slow disintegration of an upper-middle class family, for which he won the Academy Award for Best Director.^[3] Redford was credited with obtaining a powerful dramatic performance from Mary Tyler Moore, as well as superb work from Donald Sutherland and Timothy Hutton, who also won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.

Redford did not direct again until The Milagro Beanfield War (1988), a well-crafted, though not commercially successful, screen version of John Nichols' acclaimed novel of the Southwest. The Milagro Beanfield War is the story of the people of Milagro, New Mexico (based on the real town of Truchas in northern New Mexico), overcoming big developers who set about to ruin their community and force them out because of tax increases. Other directorial projects have included the period drama A River Runs Through It (1992), based on Norman Maclean's novella, and the exposé Quiz Show (1994), about the quiz show scandal of the late 1950s.^[3] In the latter film, Redford worked from a screenplay by Paul Attanasio with noted cinematographer Michael Ballhaus and a strong cast that featured Paul Scofield, John Turturro, Rob Morrow, and Ralph Fiennes. Redford handpicked Morrow for his part in the film (Morrow's only high-profile feature film role to date), because he liked his work on Northern Exposure. Redford also directed Matt Damon and Will Smith in The Legend of Bagger Vance (2000). In 2010, Redford released The Conspirator, a period drama revolving around the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Despite a subject matter of personal interest to Redford, the film received mixed reviews and proved to be a flop at the box office.

Honors[link]

U.S. President George W. Bush and First Lady Laura Bush pose with the Kennedy Center honorees, from left to right, actress Julie Harris, actor Robert Redford, singer Tina Turner, ballet dancer Suzanne Farrell and singer Tony Bennett on December 4, 2005, during the reception in the Blue Room at the White House.

Redford attended the University of Colorado in the 1950s and received an Honorary Degree in 1983.

In 1995, he received an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters degree from Bard College. He was a 2002 Lifetime Achievement Award/Honorary Oscar recipient at the 74th Academy Awards.^[6]

In 1996, he was awarded the National Medal of Arts.^[7]

In December 2005, he received the Kennedy Center Honors for his contributions to American culture. The Honors recipients are recognized for their lifetime contributions to American culture through the performing arts: whether in dance, music, theater, opera, motion pictures or television.^{[citation needed]}

In 2008 he was awarded The Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize, one of the richest prizes in the arts, given annually to "a man or woman who has made an outstanding contribution to the beauty of the world and to mankind's enjoyment and understanding of life."^[8]

The University of Southern California (USC) School of Theater announced the first annual Robert Redford Award for Engaged Artists in 2009. According to the school's web site, the award was created "to honor those who have distinguished themselves not only in the exemplary quality, skill and innovation of their work, but also in their public commitment to social responsibility, to increasing awareness of global issues and events, and to inspiring and empowering young people."^[9]

Robert Redford received an honorary Doctor of Fine Arts from Brown University at the 240th Commencement exercises on May 25, 2008.^[10] He also spoke during the ceremonies.

On 14 October 2010, he was appointed Chevalier of the Légion d'honneur.^[11]

Sundance[link]

With the financial proceeds of his acting success, starting with his salaries from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Downhill Racer, Redford bought an entire ski area on the east side of Mount Timpanogos northeast of Provo, Utah, called "Timp Haven", which was renamed "Sundance".^[3] Redford's wife Lola was from Utah and they had built a home in the area in 1963. Portions of the movie Jeremiah Johnson (1972), a film which is both one of Redford's favorites and one that has heavily influenced him, were shot near the ski area. He founded the Sundance Film Festival, Sundance Institute, Sundance Cinemas, Sundance Catalog, and the Sundance Channel, all in and around Park City, Utah, 30 miles (48 km) north of the Sundance ski area.^[3] The Sundance Film Festival caters to independent filmmakers in the United States and has received recognition from the industry as a place to open films. In 2008, Sundance exhibited 125 feature-length films from 34 countries, with more than 50,000 attendees.^[12] The name Sundance comes from his Sundance Kid character. In addition, Redford owns a celebrated restaurant called Zoom, located on Main Street in the former mining town of Park City.

Mount Timpanogos, panoramic view

Independent films[link]

Since founding the nonprofit Sundance Institute in Park City, in 1981, Redford has been deeply involved with independent film.^[3] Through its various workshop programs and popular film festival, Sundance has provided much-needed support for independent filmmakers. In 1995, Redford signed a deal with Showtime to start a 24-hour cable television channel devoted to airing independent films — the Sundance Channel premiered on February 29, 1996.

Personal life[link]

On August 9, 1958, in Las Vegas, Nevada, Redford married Lola Van Wagenen, who dropped out of college to marry him. They had four children: Scott Anthony, David James "Jamie", Shauna, and Amy Redford.

Son Jamie Redford is a writer/producer.^[13]

Scott — their first child — was born September 1, 1959, and died of sudden infant death syndrome on November 17, 1959, at age 2½ months. His remains have been buried at Provo City Cemetery in Provo, Utah. Lola and Redford divorced in 1985. He has five grandchildren: Dylan and Lena Redford (of son Jamie), Mica and Conor Schlosser (of daughter Shauna) and Eden August (of daughter Amy).^[14]

In July 2009, Redford married his longtime partner, Sibylle Szaggars, at the luxurious Louis C. Jacob Hotel in Hamburg, Germany. She had moved in with Redford in the 1990s and shares his Sundance, Utah, home.^[15] In May 2011 Alfred A Knopf published Robert Redford: The Biography by Michael Feeney Callan, written over fifteen years with Redford's input, and drawn from his personal papers and diaries.

Political activity[link]

Redford with New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson in 2009

Redford is politically liberal, and has supported environmentalism, Native American rights, and the arts. He has been noted as "an admirer of Edward Abbey, the late great anarchist voice of the desert Southwest."^[16] Most of his federal political contributions have been to Democrats (61%) or advocacy groups (34.6%), such as the Political Action Committee of the Directors Guild of America.^[17] Redford has on occasion also supported Republicans, including Brent Cornell Morris in his unsuccessful 1990 race for Utah's 3rd congressional district seat.^[17][18] Redford also supported Gary R. Herbert, another Republican and a friend, in Herbert's successful campaign to be elected Utah's Lieutenant Governor (he is currently the Governor of Utah). Redford is an avid environmentalist and is a trustee of the Natural Resources Defense Council. Redford has been a vocal critic of Barack Obama for his lack of follow-through on environmental policies. He wrote, "One reason I supported President Obama is because he said we must protect clean air, water and lands. But what good is it to say the right thing unless you act on it?" ^[19]

Filmography[link]

Actor[link]

Director[link]

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Robert Redford

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Robert Redford

• Movie, Museum Exhibits Shine New Light on US Civil War is an April 2011 radio and internet report on the Robert Redford movie "The Conspirator." The report aired on Voice of America and was written by VOA's Special English branch.
• Redford interviewed about his life, independent film making and political activism. January 2010, 45 minute video and audio interview with transcript.
• Cinema Retro covers Robert Redford at Trinity College in Dublin
• Robert Redford at the Internet Movie Database
• Sundance Resort
• The Sundance Institute
• Robert Redford slideshow at AMCtv.com
• Redford Teams up to Train Minority Filmmakers NY Daily News, May 15, 2009
• Robert Redford: Through the Years — slideshow by Life magazine