![]() Wilde foregoes any kind of heroic proselytizing about this white colonizer, a hunter on his last African gig, which, like something born of Hemingway and Greek tragedy, goes awry thanks to a clash of cultural and masculine posturing. ![]() A skilled marksman who had been on his own self-imposed last hunt before settling down on his own farm, he embarks on a fatalistic opportunity of survival despite the odds.Īs far as tales of survival go, The Naked Prey is something of an odd cross between man vs. Wilde stars as a character known only as “Man,” the lone survivor of a band of an ivory-hunting safari following a dispute over a cultural slight to a native South African tribal leader in the nineteenth century. ![]() Notably, the film premiered at the San Sebastian Film Festival and went on to win an Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay despite having a notable lack of dialogue. Of his eight feature films, perhaps the most well-remembered is his fifth endeavor, 1965’s The Naked Prey, which has been resurrected for Blu-ray after the Criterion Collection recuperated it a decade prior in 2008. Whereas Cassavetes has long been revered as a godfather of indie American cinema, Wilde’s directorial achievements have fallen into obscurity. But the potential Olympian, who would forego a promising athletic career to pursue acting, was perhaps more a prototype for the similar trajectory of someone like a John Cassavetes, another actor who would eventually spend his later career fashioning an impressive directorial resume. When one thinks of Cornel Wilde, a veritable Hollywood everyman who was peppered across a variety of noir and studio productions throughout the 1940s and 50s, he potentially conjures nostalgic memories from his leading man days (where he was often usurped by the prowess and pizzazz of his female co-stars, particularly by Gene Tierney in the seminal Leave Her to Heaven, or Ida Lupino in High Sierra). ![]()
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