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From the Page to the Screen – King Solomon’s Mines

King Solomon’s Mines is an iconic 1885 adventure novel by H. Rider Haggard. It is considered to be the prototype Lost World and one of the classics of the genre. It received many adaptations with the best one being the 1950 version.

THE 1950 VERSION

The most famous adaptation was released in 1950 and it received quite strong reviews. It garnered a Best Picture nomination and it won two technical Oscars. It’s a solid movie, but it did not stand the test of time all that well.

PLOT

The movie is faithful to the novel only to a certain degree. The addition of romance actually worked, but the titular mines appearing as an afterthought was a fatal decision by the filmmakers that undermined the main story at hand. It’s just not as exciting or as adventurous as the source material.

WINNER – BOOK

CHARACTERIZATION

I would say that Allan is very well realized in the movie and the added female character was also a delight. Deborah Kerr was wonderful in this role. The supporting characters were forgettable, but then again the book was similarly problematic in that area, so this is the one aspect where the movie is on par with the novel.

WINNER – TIE

EMOTION

The novel isn’t moving per say, but it does feature a rousing adventurous tone throughout and a sense of despair when things go wrong. All of these were missing in a film that was, yes, romantic, but otherwise not much else.

WINNER – BOOK

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THEMES

Science versus superstition and of course the dangers of greed are the main themes in the book, but the film itself was rather empty thematically speaking as it focused too much on the spectacle.

WINNER – BOOK

TECHNICAL ASPECTS

The Technicolor cinematography is absolutely gorgeous and it’s the one thing that made this movie truly worth seeing. It was shot on location and it was beautiful for that. The editing was problematic, but at least the film was an audio-visual delight.

WINNER – TIE

BOOK 5: FILM 2

Overall, this was a solid film adaptation that looked great and it featured some excellent acting performances, but the lack of more pronounced adventure elements was problematic and so was the pacing that is ridiculously slow and mediocre. It is a film that adapts the book somewhat faithfully, but those bad decisions prevented it from reaching greatness, which was unfortunate.