A Farewell to Arms

Strange that one of America's favorite writers has no success in having his novels transferred to the screen with any fidelity or improvement over the original. 'A Farewell to Arms' is a lumbering, turgid, over-stuffed movie that never seems real. Chemistry between Hudson and Jones is simply not there--Jennifer Jones, in particular, seems remote and detached as the nurse even when she's supposed to be wildly in love. And then there's the matter of length--it seems to go on forever with a very weak resolution.

David O. Selznick wanted to create something that would rank alongside his 'Gone with the Wind' as an epic romance with a war background--but the talky script defeated everyone. Hemingway himself publicly disowned the movie, claiming that Jones was far too old for the part and unhappy about the film in general. At any rate, it was not the hoped for success and did nothing to halt the decline of Selznick's career--or Jennifer Jones' career for that matter. A big disappointment.

Obviously, a great deal of time and money was lavished on this project. Producer Selznick intended it to be a vindication of a career that peaked with "Gone With The Wind" in 1939, and then began a long, slow, almost painful decline. By the mid fifties he had become something of a "has-been" in Hollywood. The result? Pretty much a miss. The book is probably unfilmable, of course, but the screenplay still leaves much to be desired. Rock Hudson is far too shallow to make a go at the over-the-top emotionalism this story needs. The usually wonderful Jennifer Jones, for whom this project was conceived, somehow doesn't seem to exhibit the idealism and resolve the part needs, and that she demonstrated with such seemingly effortlessness in many other films. The direction is stilted and sometimes downright awkward, more the fault of producer Selznick, I would bet, who had a reputation for micro-managing his films, than famed director Charles Vidor.

Simply put, I'm never convinced, not even for a moment, that what is happening is real and not just another movie. Too bad.

David O. Selznick immediately signals his intention of making another 'Gone With the Wind' by pompously scrolling the credits in big letters across the screen. It's far too long but otherwise not too bad. Everyone complains that Jennifer Jones was too old for the part, but no one objected that in the earlier version Helen Hayes and Gary Cooper were also in their thirties.

A lot of people are being terribly unfair to this production of A Farewell To Arms. Not that it's a great film, it misses that by a good distance, but that even films that are the best adaptations of Ernest Hemingway's work fall far short for Hemingway purists. And David O. Selznick was far from a Hemingway purist.

No Selznick when it came to the career of his wife Jennifer Jones lost all kinds of sense of balance. Another reviewer was quite right, Jean Simmons, Joan Collins, Elizabeth Taylor all would have made acceptable Catherine Barkleys.

One thing also to remember that we're not even starting out with pure Hemingway to begin with. Both this version and the 1932 version that starred Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes are not just based on the novel, they are based on a play that was adapted from the novel by Laurence Stallings who wrote What Price Glory. The play ran for 30 performances in 1930 and starred Glenn Anders and Elissa Landi on Broadway. I suspect the Depression had a lot to do with the closing as it did many shows that year.

Originally John Huston was slated to direct and he had directed Jones in both We Were Strangers and Beat The Devil with little or no interference from Selznick. But Selznick fired Huston and replaced him with Charles Vidor because allegedly too much attention was paid to Rock Hudson and not enough to Jennifer.

That's ironic as all get out because the novel itself is as all Hemingway works is male chauvinistic in the extreme. If he wanted to showcase Jennifer, any Hemingway just ain't the vehicle. He should have used one of the Bronte sisters.

Since the novel is male oriented Rock Hudson makes a fine Fredric Henry, the idealistic man who volunteers on the Italian front as an ambulance driver to experience war so he can write about it when it's over. On that Italian front it didn't look like it was ever going to be over.

That's another problem with this work, how do you sell it to the movie going public, as a romance or an anti-war tract? If you're Adolph Zukor for Paramount or David O. Selznick probably romance is the aspect that does sell.

The third major character in the film is that of the Italian army doctor Major Rinaldi played here by Vittorio DeSica. This version is more faithful to the book and presents Rinaldi as a three dimensional character.

In the 1932 version Adolphe Menjou was Rinaldi and Menjou did fine with the part as your typical suave continental type. Here Rinaldi's outspokenness about the futility of the Italian campaign leads to tragedy. It also led to an Oscar nomination for Vittorio DeSica as Best Supporting Actor. It was the only recognition A Farewell To Arms got from the Academy and DeSica lost to Red Buttons for Sayonara.

Whether Huston or Vidor did them, the battle scenes and the scenes of retreat are shattering and moving. Given the unique problems of Hemingway and Selznick, we're lucky the film came out as good as it did.

I really wanted to like A Farewell to Arms. But despite for love for Ernest Hemingway and for Rock Hudson, A Farewell to Arms just didn't work for me. Granted it does look amazing, with ravishing use of CinemaScope and the scenery and costumes are gorgeous as you can see in the first hour. The direction is fine, and the music is beautiful and cleverly composed. However, in the pace the film was very pedestrian, but the pace wasn't the only dull thing about it. I am especially talking about the story, which was overall uninteresting and wasn't affecting, and the script, which is really stilted in a lot of scenes. The ending also felt abrupt. The acting is not good, considering how talented the actors are. I love Rock Hudson, and he visibly tries hard and looks really handsome here but he seems very out of his depth. Jennifer Jones is miscast, and her performance is a very uneven mix of overacting and underacting, also she seems very detached from her character and Hudson as well. As for Vittoria di Sica, he overdoes it so wildly you feel as though he accidentally walked onto the wrong set. All in all, despite the talented cast and director and the beautiful visuals and score, the film was dull. 3/10 Bethany Cox