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Out of Africa
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For the 1985 film based in part on this memoir, see Out of Africa (film). For other uses, see Out of Africa (disambiguation).
Out of Africa
OutOfAfrica.jpg
First Edition (UK)

Author
Isak Dinesen
Country
United Kingdom, Denmark
Language
English, Danish, Swahili
Genre
Memoir
Publisher
Putnam (UK); Gyldendal (Denmark)

Publication date
 1937
Media type
Print ()
Pages
416
ISBN
ISBN 0-679-60021-3 (hardcover edition)
OCLC
25747758

Dewey Decimal
 967.62 20
LC Class
DT433.54 .D56 1992
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 called 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 rewrote it in Danish.


Contents  [hide]
1 Background
2 Structure and style
3 Themes 3.1 Trials
3.2 Contrasts and opposites
3.3 Africans
3.4 Europeans
4 Major characters
5 Shadows on the Grass
6 Adaptations
7 See also
8 Notes
9 External links

Background[edit]
"I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up; near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold."
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[edit]
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[edit]
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[edit]
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[edit]
These two trials, separated by most 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:
“ "Two homogenous units will never be capable of forming a whole… Man and woman become one… A hook and an eye are a Unity, a fastening, but with two hooks you can do nothing. A right-hand glove with its contrast the left-hand glove makes a whole, a pair of gloves; but two right-hand gloves you throw away."[14] ”
Her life in Africa offered her no shortage of such contrasting dualities: town and country, dry season and rainy season, Muslim and Christian. Her most constant theme is the contrast of African and European.
Africans[edit]
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[citation needed].
Europeans[edit]
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[edit]
##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.
Shadows on the Grass[edit]
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[edit]
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[edit]

Portal icon Novels portal
##Memoir
Notes[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Lorenzetti, Linda Rice, ‘Out of Africa': Karen Blixen's coffee years, Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, September 1, 1999
2.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Isak, Out of Africa, from the combined Vintage International Edition of Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass, New York 1989, p. 9
3.Jump up ^ Thurman, Judith, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, St. Martin’s Press, 1983, pp. 128
4.^ Jump up to: a b Lorenzetti, 'Out of Africa': Karen Blixen's coffee years
5.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 132
6.Jump up ^ Herne, Brian, White Hunters: The Golden Age of Safaris, Macmillan, 1999, p. 115
7.Jump up ^ Herne, White Hunters: The Golden Age of Safaris, p. 117
8.Jump up ^ Feinberg, Harvey M., and Solow, Joseph B., “Out of Africa,” The Journal of African History (2002), 43: 255–261 Cambridge University Press
9.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 123
10.Jump up ^ Clark, James Lippitt, memorial essay on Carl Akeley, copy in the archives of the Explorers Club, New York City
11.Jump up ^ Roosevelt, Theodore, African Game Trails, Charles Scribners' Sons, 1909, page 2
12.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Isak, Shadows on the Grass, from the combined Vintage International Edition of Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass, New York 1989, p. 384
13.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International Edition, p. 20
14.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Shadows on the Grass, Vintage International Edition, p. 384
15.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 121
16.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 171
17.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International Edition, p. 19
18.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 246
19.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International Edition, p. 217
20.Jump up ^ Herne, White Hunters: The Golden Age of Safaris, p. 109
21.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 191
22.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 184
23.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, pp. 184-188
24.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International edition, p. 229
25.^ Jump up to: a b Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 114
26.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 114-115
27.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 115
28.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 168
29.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, pp. 153–155.
30.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International edition, p. 216
31.^ Jump up to: a b Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International edition, p. 136
32.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International edition, p. 256
External links[edit]
##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.
  


Categories: 1937 novels
Autobiographical novels
Danish literature
Travel autobiographies
Novels set in Kenya
Works by Karen Blixen
Works published under a pseudonym
Novels set in Colonial Africa
Gyldendal books
G. P. Putnam's Sons books






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Out of Africa
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jump to: navigation, search

For the 1985 film based in part on this memoir, see Out of Africa (film). For other uses, see Out of Africa (disambiguation).
Out of Africa
OutOfAfrica.jpg
First Edition (UK)

Author
Isak Dinesen
Country
United Kingdom, Denmark
Language
English, Danish, Swahili
Genre
Memoir
Publisher
Putnam (UK); Gyldendal (Denmark)

Publication date
 1937
Media type
Print ()
Pages
416
ISBN
ISBN 0-679-60021-3 (hardcover edition)
OCLC
25747758

Dewey Decimal
 967.62 20
LC Class
DT433.54 .D56 1992
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 called 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 rewrote it in Danish.


Contents  [hide]
1 Background
2 Structure and style
3 Themes 3.1 Trials
3.2 Contrasts and opposites
3.3 Africans
3.4 Europeans
4 Major characters
5 Shadows on the Grass
6 Adaptations
7 See also
8 Notes
9 External links

Background[edit]
"I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the day-time you felt that you had got high up; near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold."
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[edit]
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[edit]
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[edit]
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[edit]
These two trials, separated by most 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:
“ "Two homogenous units will never be capable of forming a whole… Man and woman become one… A hook and an eye are a Unity, a fastening, but with two hooks you can do nothing. A right-hand glove with its contrast the left-hand glove makes a whole, a pair of gloves; but two right-hand gloves you throw away."[14] ”
Her life in Africa offered her no shortage of such contrasting dualities: town and country, dry season and rainy season, Muslim and Christian. Her most constant theme is the contrast of African and European.
Africans[edit]
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[citation needed].
Europeans[edit]
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[edit]
##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.
Shadows on the Grass[edit]
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[edit]
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[edit]

Portal icon Novels portal
##Memoir
Notes[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Lorenzetti, Linda Rice, ‘Out of Africa': Karen Blixen's coffee years, Tea & Coffee Trade Journal, September 1, 1999
2.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Isak, Out of Africa, from the combined Vintage International Edition of Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass, New York 1989, p. 9
3.Jump up ^ Thurman, Judith, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, St. Martin’s Press, 1983, pp. 128
4.^ Jump up to: a b Lorenzetti, 'Out of Africa': Karen Blixen's coffee years
5.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 132
6.Jump up ^ Herne, Brian, White Hunters: The Golden Age of Safaris, Macmillan, 1999, p. 115
7.Jump up ^ Herne, White Hunters: The Golden Age of Safaris, p. 117
8.Jump up ^ Feinberg, Harvey M., and Solow, Joseph B., “Out of Africa,” The Journal of African History (2002), 43: 255–261 Cambridge University Press
9.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 123
10.Jump up ^ Clark, James Lippitt, memorial essay on Carl Akeley, copy in the archives of the Explorers Club, New York City
11.Jump up ^ Roosevelt, Theodore, African Game Trails, Charles Scribners' Sons, 1909, page 2
12.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Isak, Shadows on the Grass, from the combined Vintage International Edition of Out of Africa and Shadows on the Grass, New York 1989, p. 384
13.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International Edition, p. 20
14.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Shadows on the Grass, Vintage International Edition, p. 384
15.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 121
16.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 171
17.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International Edition, p. 19
18.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 246
19.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International Edition, p. 217
20.Jump up ^ Herne, White Hunters: The Golden Age of Safaris, p. 109
21.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 191
22.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 184
23.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, pp. 184-188
24.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International edition, p. 229
25.^ Jump up to: a b Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 114
26.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 114-115
27.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 115
28.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, p. 168
29.Jump up ^ Thurman, Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Storyteller, pp. 153–155.
30.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International edition, p. 216
31.^ Jump up to: a b Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International edition, p. 136
32.Jump up ^ Dinesen, Out of Africa, Vintage International edition, p. 256
External links[edit]
##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.
  


Categories: 1937 novels
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Danish literature
Travel autobiographies
Novels set in Kenya
Works by Karen Blixen
Works published under a pseudonym
Novels set in Colonial Africa
Gyldendal books
G. P. Putnam's Sons books






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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Africa









Out of Africa (film)
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Out of Africa
Out of africa poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster

Directed by
Sydney Pollack
Produced by
Sydney Pollack
Kim Jorgensen
Screenplay by
Kurt Luedtke
Based on
Out of Africa
 by Isak Dinesen
Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Story Teller
 by Judith Thurman
Silence Will Speak
 by Errol Trzebinski
Starring
Robert Redford
Meryl Streep
Klaus Maria Brandauer
Music by
John Barry
Cinematography
David Watkin
Edited by
Fredric Steinkamp
William Steinkamp
Pembroke Herring
Sheldon Kahn

Production
 company

Mirage Enterprises

Distributed by
Universal Pictures

Release dates

December 18, 1985


Running time
 161 minutes
Country
United States
Language
English
 Swahili
Budget
$28 million[1]
Box office
$128,499,205[2]
Out of Africa is a 1985 American epic 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 Danish 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.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production
4 Differences between the film and real life events
5 Soundtrack
6 Technical notes
7 I had a farm in Africa ...
8 Reception
9 Awards and honors
10 References
11 External links

Plot[edit]
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, he 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 from her expectations, 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 she is distressed when she learns of his extramarital affairs. To make matters worse, Karen contracts syphilis from her philandering husband (at the time, cures were uncertain) 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. No longer able to have children of her own due to the effects of the syphilis, she 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. Her friendship with Denys Finch Hatton develops further.
Despite her expectation and desire to have what begins as an affair turn into a lasting relationship, Karen realizes that Denys is as impossible to domesticate as the wild animals he hunts and often refers to. Although he moves into Karen's house, he criticizes her desire to "own" things; this implies even people. He 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 grudgingly continues in the relationship, knowing it will not ever be official. He decides to invite a female mutual acquaintance on one of his safaris, which exceeds Karen's ability to tolerate his justifications for his lifestyle and behavior. Karen asks him to accede to her request to not take her along, and he refuses. She asks him to move out. The plantation finally yields a good harvest at long last, but a devastating fire breaks out in the processing shed, and the crops and all of the factory equipment are destroyed.
Now financially broke, and 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 enjoy a drink and a dance. He asks her if he might escort her to Mombasa in his biplane to begin her journey home. She agrees and he promises to return after a few days. However, Denys never returns, and Karen is told that his plane has crashed and that 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 became an author and a storyteller, writing about her experiences and letters in Africa, though she never returned there.
Cast[edit]
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[edit]
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 Finch Hatton'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]
Klaus Maria Brandauer was director Sydney Pollack's only choice for Bror Blixen, even having trouble to pick a replacement when it appeared that Brandauer's schedule would prevent him from participating. Robert Redford became Finch Hatton once Redford thought he had a charm no British actor could convey. Meryl Streep landed the part by showing up for her meeting with the director wearing a low-cut blouse and a push-up bra, as Pollack had originally thought the actress did not have enough sex appeal for the role.[4]
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, and a recreation of 1910s Nairobi built across a year. The scenes set in Denmark were actually filmed in Surrey, England.
Differences between the film and real life events[edit]
This film quotes the start of the book, "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills" [p. 3], and Karen 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 Denys and Karen'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 Finch Hatton'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, he did so fully intending to play him as an Englishman. This conception was later reversed by the director Sydney Pollack, who thought it would be distracting for the audience. 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 lioness.
The film shows Karen reciting from To An Athlete Dying Young at Finch Hatton's funeral but there is no mention of this in the book.
Soundtrack[edit]

Out of Africa

Soundtrack album by John Barry

Released
1986
Recorded
1985
Genre
Soundtrack
Length
12 at 33:27
 18 at 38:42
Label
MCA Records
Varèse Sarabande
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.[5] 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.[6]
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."Under the Sun" (4:21)
6."Safari" (2:44)
7."Karen's Journey/Siyawe" (4:50) contains traditional African music
8."Flying Over Africa" (3:25)
9."I Had a Compass from Karen (Karen's Theme II)" (2:31)
10."Alone on the Farm" (1:56)
11."Let the Rest of the World Go By" (3:17) – by Ernest R. Ball and J. Keirn Brennan
12."If I Know a Song of Africa (Karen's Theme III)" (2:12)
13."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."Under the Sun" (4:21)
7."Mozart: clarinet concerto in A Major: K622 (Adagio)" (7:39) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
8."Karen's Journey Starts" (3:41)
9."Karen's Journey Ends" (1:00)
10."Karen's Return from Border" (1:33)
11."Karen Builds a School" (1:19)
12."Harvest" (2:02)
13."Sunset" (7:19)
14."Love" (8:16)
15."Safari" (2:35)
16."Karen's Journey/Siyawe" (4:50)
17."I Had a Compass from Karen (Karen's Theme II)" (2:31)
18."Flight Over Africa" (2:41)
19."Beach at Night" (0:58)
20."You'll Keep Me Then" (0:58)
21."Let the Rest of the World Go By" (3:17)
22."If I Knew a Song of Africa" (2:23)
23."You Are Karen M'Sabu" (1:17)
24."Petting my Cow (4:34)
25."Out of Africa (End Credits)" (2:49)
Technical notes[edit]
In the Director's Notes on the DVD of Pollack's 2005 film The Interpreter,[7] Pollack himself stated that he filmed Out of Africa and his later films of that decade in 1.85:1 widescreen; and that it "...probably was one I should have had in widescreen" (i.e. 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.
I had a farm in Africa ...[edit]
Karen Blixen: (Voiceover) I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. (Here is the remainder: The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the daytime you felt that you had got high up; near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.)
Reception[edit]
Out of Africa has received mixed reviews from critics, where today the film currently holds a 52% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 42 reviews with the consensus: "Though lensed with stunning cinematography and featuring a pair of winning performances from Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, Out of Africa suffers from excessive length and glacial pacing." Out of Africa along with The Greatest Show on Earth, Cimarron, The Broadway Melody, and Cavalcade remain to be the only Best Picture Oscar winners to have "rotten" (below 60%) scores on Rotten Tomatoes.[8] [9]
Awards and honors[edit]
Academy Awards
The film won seven Academy Awards and was nominated in a further four categories.[10][11]
WonBest 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)
NominatedBest 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[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Harmetz, Aljean (November 29, 1985). "At the Movies". The New York Times. Retrieved June 13, 2011.
2.Jump up ^ Box Office Mojo (Out Of Africa)
3.Jump up ^ Out of Africa, p. 252
4.Jump up ^ "Song of Africa", Out of Africa DVD
5.Jump up ^ AFI's 100 Years Of Film Scores at AFI.com
6.Jump up ^ Out of Africa soundtrack review at Filmtracks.com
7.Jump up ^ The Interpreter, DVD#25835, Universal Studios
8.Jump up ^ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/guides/best_and_worst_best_pictures/
9.Jump up ^ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/broadway_melody/
10.Jump up ^ "The 58th Academy Awards (1986) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-10-16.
11.Jump up ^ "NY Times: Out of Africa". NY Times. Retrieved 2009-01-01.
External links[edit]
Out of Africa at the Internet Movie Database
Out of Africa at the TCM Movie Database
Out of Africa at AllMovie
Out of Africa at Box Office Mojo
Out of Africa at Rotten Tomatoes


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Categories: 1985 films
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Films whose director won the Best Director Academy Award
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Films that won the Best Original Score Academy Award
Romantic epic films
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Africa_(film)









Out of Africa (film)
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Out of Africa
Out of africa poster.jpg
Theatrical release poster

Directed by
Sydney Pollack
Produced by
Sydney Pollack
Kim Jorgensen
Screenplay by
Kurt Luedtke
Based on
Out of Africa
 by Isak Dinesen
Isak Dinesen: The Life of a Story Teller
 by Judith Thurman
Silence Will Speak
 by Errol Trzebinski
Starring
Robert Redford
Meryl Streep
Klaus Maria Brandauer
Music by
John Barry
Cinematography
David Watkin
Edited by
Fredric Steinkamp
William Steinkamp
Pembroke Herring
Sheldon Kahn

Production
 company

Mirage Enterprises

Distributed by
Universal Pictures

Release dates

December 18, 1985


Running time
 161 minutes
Country
United States
Language
English
 Swahili
Budget
$28 million[1]
Box office
$128,499,205[2]
Out of Africa is a 1985 American epic 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 Danish 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.


Contents  [hide]
1 Plot
2 Cast
3 Production
4 Differences between the film and real life events
5 Soundtrack
6 Technical notes
7 I had a farm in Africa ...
8 Reception
9 Awards and honors
10 References
11 External links

Plot[edit]
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, he 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 from her expectations, 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 she is distressed when she learns of his extramarital affairs. To make matters worse, Karen contracts syphilis from her philandering husband (at the time, cures were uncertain) 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. No longer able to have children of her own due to the effects of the syphilis, she 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. Her friendship with Denys Finch Hatton develops further.
Despite her expectation and desire to have what begins as an affair turn into a lasting relationship, Karen realizes that Denys is as impossible to domesticate as the wild animals he hunts and often refers to. Although he moves into Karen's house, he criticizes her desire to "own" things; this implies even people. He 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 grudgingly continues in the relationship, knowing it will not ever be official. He decides to invite a female mutual acquaintance on one of his safaris, which exceeds Karen's ability to tolerate his justifications for his lifestyle and behavior. Karen asks him to accede to her request to not take her along, and he refuses. She asks him to move out. The plantation finally yields a good harvest at long last, but a devastating fire breaks out in the processing shed, and the crops and all of the factory equipment are destroyed.
Now financially broke, and 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 enjoy a drink and a dance. He asks her if he might escort her to Mombasa in his biplane to begin her journey home. She agrees and he promises to return after a few days. However, Denys never returns, and Karen is told that his plane has crashed and that 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 became an author and a storyteller, writing about her experiences and letters in Africa, though she never returned there.
Cast[edit]
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[edit]
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 Finch Hatton'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]
Klaus Maria Brandauer was director Sydney Pollack's only choice for Bror Blixen, even having trouble to pick a replacement when it appeared that Brandauer's schedule would prevent him from participating. Robert Redford became Finch Hatton once Redford thought he had a charm no British actor could convey. Meryl Streep landed the part by showing up for her meeting with the director wearing a low-cut blouse and a push-up bra, as Pollack had originally thought the actress did not have enough sex appeal for the role.[4]
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, and a recreation of 1910s Nairobi built across a year. The scenes set in Denmark were actually filmed in Surrey, England.
Differences between the film and real life events[edit]
This film quotes the start of the book, "I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills" [p. 3], and Karen 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 Denys and Karen'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 Finch Hatton'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, he did so fully intending to play him as an Englishman. This conception was later reversed by the director Sydney Pollack, who thought it would be distracting for the audience. 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 lioness.
The film shows Karen reciting from To An Athlete Dying Young at Finch Hatton's funeral but there is no mention of this in the book.
Soundtrack[edit]

Out of Africa

Soundtrack album by John Barry

Released
1986
Recorded
1985
Genre
Soundtrack
Length
12 at 33:27
 18 at 38:42
Label
MCA Records
Varèse Sarabande
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.[5] 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.[6]
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."Under the Sun" (4:21)
6."Safari" (2:44)
7."Karen's Journey/Siyawe" (4:50) contains traditional African music
8."Flying Over Africa" (3:25)
9."I Had a Compass from Karen (Karen's Theme II)" (2:31)
10."Alone on the Farm" (1:56)
11."Let the Rest of the World Go By" (3:17) – by Ernest R. Ball and J. Keirn Brennan
12."If I Know a Song of Africa (Karen's Theme III)" (2:12)
13."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."Under the Sun" (4:21)
7."Mozart: clarinet concerto in A Major: K622 (Adagio)" (7:39) by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
8."Karen's Journey Starts" (3:41)
9."Karen's Journey Ends" (1:00)
10."Karen's Return from Border" (1:33)
11."Karen Builds a School" (1:19)
12."Harvest" (2:02)
13."Sunset" (7:19)
14."Love" (8:16)
15."Safari" (2:35)
16."Karen's Journey/Siyawe" (4:50)
17."I Had a Compass from Karen (Karen's Theme II)" (2:31)
18."Flight Over Africa" (2:41)
19."Beach at Night" (0:58)
20."You'll Keep Me Then" (0:58)
21."Let the Rest of the World Go By" (3:17)
22."If I Knew a Song of Africa" (2:23)
23."You Are Karen M'Sabu" (1:17)
24."Petting my Cow (4:34)
25."Out of Africa (End Credits)" (2:49)
Technical notes[edit]
In the Director's Notes on the DVD of Pollack's 2005 film The Interpreter,[7] Pollack himself stated that he filmed Out of Africa and his later films of that decade in 1.85:1 widescreen; and that it "...probably was one I should have had in widescreen" (i.e. 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.
I had a farm in Africa ...[edit]
Karen Blixen: (Voiceover) I had a farm in Africa at the foot of the Ngong Hills. (Here is the remainder: The Equator runs across these highlands, a hundred miles to the north, and the farm lay at an altitude of over six thousand feet. In the daytime you felt that you had got high up; near to the sun, but the early mornings and evenings were limpid and restful, and the nights were cold.)
Reception[edit]
Out of Africa has received mixed reviews from critics, where today the film currently holds a 52% "rotten" rating on Rotten Tomatoes based on 42 reviews with the consensus: "Though lensed with stunning cinematography and featuring a pair of winning performances from Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, Out of Africa suffers from excessive length and glacial pacing." Out of Africa along with The Greatest Show on Earth, Cimarron, The Broadway Melody, and Cavalcade remain to be the only Best Picture Oscar winners to have "rotten" (below 60%) scores on Rotten Tomatoes.[8] [9]
Awards and honors[edit]
Academy Awards
The film won seven Academy Awards and was nominated in a further four categories.[10][11]
WonBest 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)
NominatedBest 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[edit]
1.Jump up ^ Harmetz, Aljean (November 29, 1985). "At the Movies". The New York Times. Retrieved June 13, 2011.
2.Jump up ^ Box Office Mojo (Out Of Africa)
3.Jump up ^ Out of Africa, p. 252
4.Jump up ^ "Song of Africa", Out of Africa DVD
5.Jump up ^ AFI's 100 Years Of Film Scores at AFI.com
6.Jump up ^ Out of Africa soundtrack review at Filmtracks.com
7.Jump up ^ The Interpreter, DVD#25835, Universal Studios
8.Jump up ^ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/guides/best_and_worst_best_pictures/
9.Jump up ^ http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/broadway_melody/
10.Jump up ^ "The 58th Academy Awards (1986) Nominees and Winners". oscars.org. Retrieved 2011-10-16.
11.Jump up ^ "NY Times: Out of Africa". NY Times. Retrieved 2009-01-01.
External links[edit]
Out of Africa at the Internet Movie Database
Out of Africa at the TCM Movie Database
Out of Africa at AllMovie
Out of Africa at Box Office Mojo
Out of Africa at Rotten Tomatoes


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Films directed by Sydney Pollack
























  


Categories: 1985 films
1980s drama films
American biographical films
American drama films
English-language films
Swahili-language films
Films directed by Sydney Pollack
Best Drama Picture Golden Globe winners
Best Picture Academy Award winners
Epic films
Films based on actual events
Films based on books
Films set in Denmark
Films set in Kenya
Films set in the British Empire
Films set in the 1910s
Films set in the 1920s
Films set in the 1930s
Films shot in Africa
Films shot in England
Films shot in Kenya
Films that won the Best Sound Mixing Academy Award
Films whose art director won the Best Art Direction Academy Award
Films whose cinematographer won the Best Cinematography Academy Award
Films whose director won the Best Director Academy Award
Films whose writer won the Best Adapted Screenplay Academy Award
Films that won the Best Original Score Academy Award
Romantic epic films
Universal Pictures films
Films based on works by Karen Blixen
Film scores by John Barry (composer)






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This page was last modified on 14 February 2015, at 03:04.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out_of_Africa_(film)