n her brief but extremely successful film career spanning only six years Grace Kelly managed to fit in many great performances in such memorable efforts as "Mogambo", "Dial M For Murder", "Rear Window", "The Country Girl" and "High Society ". "Green Fire", co starring Stewart Granger was one of the few films she actually made at her home studio of MGM which in theory should have been the studio most suited to displaying her obvious talents to best advantage. MGM however seemed content to simply loan her out to other studios eager to hire the cool and sophisticated Miss Kelly for their major productions. This MGM effort "Green Fire", is certainly one of Grace Kelly's lesser efforts that was dismissed by the critics at the time of its release in 1954 despite it's box office success and is a film largely forgotten today when people think of the film work of Grace Kelly. However with the shades of "King Solomon's Mines", and "Elephant Walk", in its storyline and the splendid location photography resulting from a totally miserable location shoot in Colombia, the film has a lot of merits as a romantic action adventure. "Green Fire", while no masterpiece is an enjoyable mid fifties effort and it is interesting to see Grace Kelly in a very different type of role and location than one is used to seeing her in.

As "Green Fire", opens we find rugged mining engineer Rian Mitchell (Stewart Granger), discovering a lost emerald mine in the highlands of Colombia which had last been operated by the Spanish conquistadors. Rian is a man consumed by the quest for wealth however he has to contend with local bandits and a savage leopard which injury him and stop him from going any further with his mining plans. Taken to recuperate at the plantation home of local coffee grower Catherine Knowland (Grace Kelly), and her brother Donald (John Ericson), Rian manages to exercise his old ability to charm the womenfolk and a strong attraction develops between catherine and himself. At port however his partner Vic Leonard (Paul Douglas), is preparing to leave Colombia and Rian anxious to get his assistance to mine th eemeralds tricks him into staying and remianing his partner. returning to the mine Rian at first gets Catherine's cooperation and resumes his romantic overtures to her from where he had left off. However Rian's endless greed and drive to get the emeralds at any cost soon creates troubles as not only does he come into dangerous conflict with the chief of the local bandits who threatens Catherine at her home but he also takes Donald into the mining operation despite his complete lack of knowledge of mining operations, solely to obtain the avaliable numbers of workers on the plantation for his mining needs. Catherine and Rian then come into direct conflict with each other as the coffee harvest time arrives and she has few workers left and she finds her fields under threat of flooding from Rian's mining operations. When a tragic accident at the mine site kills Donald even Vic abandons his old friend and sets out to help Catherine with her harvesting all the while harbouring a passion for the beautiful young woman himself. It takes a final huge shot out between the bandits and Rian's men when Catherine and Vic do support him, for Rian to finally come to his senses and realise where he has gone wrong. At great risk to himself he sets in place a huge explosion of dynamite that not only diverts the water away from Catherine's plantation but also buryies the mine under tons of rubble from where it can no longer be reached. Having exorcised his demons for money Rian then reunites with a forgiving Catherine at the finale.

Despite the presense of such a world famous actress as Grace Kelly, "Green Fire", really is Stewart Granger's film and in a way provides him with a welcome change of pace from many of the stiff costume epics that he was ploughing his way through in the mide '50's. Here he is all he-man and certainly con-man as well and actually he does good work as the emerald hungry miner who'll stop at nothing to get what he wants. Granger certainly never looked better than he does here in "Green Fire", and although he is certainly not the most famous of Grace Kelly's leading men the pair have a reasonably good, although not magical chemistry on screen. Grace Kelly quite rightly had great dissatisfaction with the roles that her home studio MGM were giving her and did almost all of her greatest films on loan out to studios such as Universal and Paramount. Here she has a fairly standard and rather colourless character to play and even though her Catherine is a woman who runs a coffee plantation largely on her own she in many ways is your standard romantic product of the fifties looking impossibly beautiful even in the rough conditions in Colombia. Veteran actor Paul Douglas has probably the most interesting character to play here as Rian's old mining buddy who is repeatedly loyal to his old friend despite his obvious failings but who goes over to Catherine's side when he sees what greed has done to his friend. His unrequited passion for the Grace Kelly character while doomed from the start actually adds some poignancy to his rough as nails character and he definately comes out the more likeable of the two male leads. Of course the real beauty and memorable qualities in "Green Fire" rest not in its fairly standard love story or th eperformances but in the totally magnificent location photography in the remote regions of Colombia where the plantation and mining scenes were shot. MGM really went all out in the photographic side of this story and apparently the cast and crew undured many weeks of miserable weather and conditions to give the film its very realistic look. The spectacular landslide that comes at the climax of the story is well worth waiting for and involves a huge rock fall done entirely with explosives and with none of the computer technology that would be employed to achieve the same effect nowadays.

While "Green Fire", would never be judged as great cinematic art or even a major effort in the catalogues of work of both Grace Kelly and Stewart Granger it is nevertheless a highly enjoyable adventure romance set in some spectacular scenery. Blessed as it is with some excellently staged special effects near the film's exciting climax and a grand shoot out that would do any western adventure story proud it makes great viewing for both action lovers as well as for those who like romances set in exotic places. "Green Fire"; while providing Grace Kelly with one of her less colourful roles does however capture her legendary beauty to perfection, the like of which seems to be largely absent in our current top actrsses. For love and adventure mixed in with human greed in the emerald mines of Colombia "Green Fire", is sure to provide great, but not classic entertainment from the days of the old Hollywood studio system. Enjoy.