58th Academy Awards · 1986
Out of Africa
Directed byCooked up by Sydney Pollack
“Based on a true story.”
“Coffee farm era, gorgeous plane ride, big feelings. ✈️☕”
The storyThe lore 📖
Tells the life story of Danish author Karen Blixen, who at the beginning of the 20th century moved to Africa to build a new life for herself. The film is based on her 1937 autobiographical novel.
Danish writer Karen Blixen moves to Kenya in the early 1900s to run a coffee farm, and it is her whole independent-woman era. She has a situationship with charming adventurer Denys, who takes her on a plane ride over Africa that is honestly a vibe. Based on her real memoir about love, loss, and landscapes that slay. ✈️🌅
What critics & audiences sayThe receipts 🧾
Tomatometer
62%
Fresh
#94 of 98 winnersFamous linesLines living rent free
Perhaps he knew, as I did not, that the Earth was made round so that we would not see too far down the road.
It's an odd feeling, farewell. There is such envy in it. Men go off to be tested, for courage. And if we're tested at all, it's for patience, for doing without…
I don't want to live someone else's idea of how to live. Don't ask me to do that.
Karen Blixen: She almost had me for lunch!
Denys: Well, it wasn't her fault, Baroness. She's a lion.
Denys: Doesn't that outfit come with a rifle?
Karen Blixen: Ye-ah, uh. On my saddle.
Denys: Better keep it with you. Your horse isn't much of a shot.
I wouldn't run. If you do, she'll think you're something good to eat.
Quotes via Wikiquote
Filming locationsWhere they shot it 📍
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Karen
Nairobi, Kenya
Much of the film was shot in the Karen and Lang'ata area near the real Ngong Hills, where Blixen actually farmed.
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Mbogani
Karen, Nairobi, Kenya
Blixen's first house, now a dairy, served as her farmhouse because her real home was then part of a nursing school.
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Chyulu Hills
Kenya
These hills stood in for the less picturesque Ngong Hills on screen.
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Lang'ata
Nairobi, Kenya
A recreation of 1910s Nairobi was built on unoccupied land here, and much filming took place in the nearby Scott house.
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Nairobi School
Nairobi, Kenya
The school's administration block, a close replica of a colonial governor's residence, played Government House.
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Gilgil to Thompson's Falls railway
Kenya
Train scenes used abandoned track here, with a hidden diesel pushing a non-working museum steam locomotive.
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Castle Rising Castle
Castle Rising, near King's Lynn, England
The Norfolk castle was dressed as a Danish counterpart for Karen's return home to early 20th-century Denmark.
Fun factsFacts that go hard 🤓
- Sydney Pollack initially thought Meryl Streep lacked enough sex appeal to play Karen Blixen; she won the part by showing up to their meeting in a low-cut blouse and a push-up bra.Wikipedia · Production
- Robert Redford intended to play the English aristocrat Denys Finch Hatton with an English accent, but Pollack told him to use his own voice, and Redford reportedly had to re-record early lines that still carried a trace of English.Wikipedia · Historical differences
- The vintage steam locomotive borrowed from the Nairobi Railway Museum did not work, so a diesel engine hidden inside a box car pushed the train while effects crews faked the steam and smoke.Wikipedia · Production
- The film's passenger car was the actual railway car from which a man was dragged and killed by a marauding lioness during the building of the Uganda Railway, the incident known as the Man-eaters of Tsavo.Wikipedia · Historical differences
- The grandson of Chief Kinyanjui, a real Kikuyu leader named in Karen Blixen's book, played his own grandfather in the film.Wikipedia · Production
- Audrey Hepburn was Pollack's first choice for Karen Blixen, and Jeremy Irons was considered for Denys before Redford was cast.Wikipedia · Production
- John Barry's lush score won the Oscar for Best Original Score and ranks 15th on the American Film Institute's list of the top 25 American film scores.Wikipedia · Soundtrack
- Karen Blixen's real farmhouse was part of a nursing school during filming, so the crew shot at her nearby first house, Mbogani, which is a dairy today.Wikipedia · Production
- The film shows Karen with a single dog, but the real Blixen had two similar dogs named Dawn and Dusk, and her farm covered 4,000 acres worked by 800 Kikuyu.Wikipedia · Historical differences
- Out of Africa grossed $227.5 million worldwide and was the second highest-grossing film of its year in Germany.Wikipedia · Box office