16 Nov The Ascent
This is the book by Felice Benuzzi that the 1994 film “The Ascent” was based on.
(1994) In a British Prisoner of War camp in East Africa, an Italian POW is determined to climb Mt. Kenya, and the camp commander is just as determined that he will not. Just as the movie opens you read across the screen: This film is based on a true story.
I can’t find much written about the movie, but I did read that the book it was based on is called a “mountaineering classic.” No Picnic on Mount Kenya: A Daring Escape, A Perilous Climb was written by Felice Benuzzi in 1946. Benuzzi was one of three Italian POW’s who escaped from a British POW camp near Kenya and climbed the mountain, then broke back into camp. Here is a National Geographic article about the extraordinary feat.
The actors in “The Ascent” were excellent. Vincent Spano played the Italian mountain climber, and Tony Lo Bianco was the leader … the Benuzzi character I suppose. Although neither spoke with much of an Italian accent, they were realistic enough. Ben Cross (“Chariots of Fire”) was the unhappy-to-be-there camp commander.
A distant relative of the camp commander wrote about the movie and his connection to it. He didn’t like that the screenplay strayed from the real story and that they threw in a love story subplot. Don’t they always?
Some of the filming had to be in Africa, and I’m not sure what mountain they were really on, but the camera work was top notch. It was exciting, scary and seemed impossible that it could have really happened.
Great adventure.
No Picnic on Mount Kenya: A Daring Escape, A Perilous Climb at amazon.com
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