Truly Dreadful Film

It’s fine. It's literally the definition of a fine movie. You’ve seen it before, you know every beat and outcome before the characters even do. Only question is how much escapism you’re looking for.

The best films of this genre always show a path and provide a takeaway for being a better person.

The film never slows down or bores, plunging from one harrowing sequence to the next.

Frederick Henry (Rock Hudson) is an American in an Italian ambulance unit in WWI. He falls for nurse Catherine Barkley (Jennifer Jones). Later he's injured at the front. He's treated by his doctor friend Major Alessandro Rinaldi. He has an affair with Catherine and she gets pregnant.The romantic acting is old fashion and lacks real heat. It's very fake. The war lacks tension. It looks like David O. Selznick had paid for a cast of thousands but it doesn't look intense. Even the epic retreat should be better. It tries to be funny without succeeding. It's too slow and too long. I couldn't wait for it to finish not long after it started. It's boring.

This movie could have gone in a number of different directions because of Hemingway's writing style. I read the book about a week before watching the movie (niether by choice) so I had a pretty good idea of where and how each was different. If you've read the novel, you can understand how the director and actors would have had a hard time getting the characters across since Hemingway provides practically no emotion or description to his dialogue. He wanted to keep the meaning behind his characters words ambiguous to make it interesting. However, that leaves a few too many options when you're an actor and have to choose one emotion to convey. I didn't like how it came off, but I'll talk about that more later. The story doesn't transition from the book to the movie well. It's not a bad subject matter, but the story is famous for its symbolism rather more than anything else, and symbolism expressed with words is extremely hard to translate into images.Our two characters are a little hard to grasp since they were written in a way that reflected to aimlessness of the 1920's. Catherine in particular has a very romanticized perception of the war and her relationship with Frederic Henry. Frederic has an inverse view of things in which he carries a constant air of what is almost construable as apathy. Rock Hudson's sappier portrayal of him makes him seem like less of an unfeeling Bond-type and more of a star-crossed lover. There are very few other characters of significance. Rinaldi is probably the most prominent minor character, followed by the Milan nurses (Fergusson, and Van Campen), and the army priest. These parts feature the better acting performances of the movie. The scene where the priest remains in the burning hospital (which by the way was not in the book) was, in my opinion, the best scene of the movie. I don't know that Vittorio de Sica's portrayal of Rinaldi was Oscar worthy, but it was the most worthy of a nomination out of all the aspects of the film.The story ends up being driven by a number of things. Among them are Frederic and Catherine's relationship, Frederic recovering from his injury, the general tide of the war, the impending birth of Frederic and Catherine's child, and Frederic's desire to seek solace from the war after deserting. The story as a whole just sort of exists. It doesn't feel terribly alive, but it's functional and doesn't have any logic issues or inconsistencies.The acting from the lead roles felt pretty weak. They must be forgiven to an extent by Hemingway's ambiguous dialogue, but they certainly didn't give the best possible portrayals. When I was reading Catherine's rambling sentences in the book, I thought there might be some kind of coherence to it that would make it sound natural and hoped that an actress saying those same lines would provide that. Unfortunately, I was wrong. Jennifer Jones portrayal didn't have any more coherence than the static text and felt almost pathetically unrealistic. This even extended to her expressions like in the scene where Catherine is looking for Frederic among the advancing Italian force and she wears over exaggerated smiles and frowns. Rock Hudson's performance didn't really work for me because he seemed like he was trying to be too emotional while playing a character that has a hardened personality. Besides that, his emotions seemed kind of inconsistent and I didn't really buy that the character would have felt the way Hudson portrayed him to be. The supporting roles were all acted pretty well, though I don't think the talent was "wasted" on those parts since the supporting actors wouldn't have fit the lead roles.The overall feel of the movie felt a bit too romantic and not quite dark enough. Now, since that statement is coming from an action fan, it will sound biased. However, Earnest Hemingway felt much the same way upon the film's release, and was disappointed that it didn't portray the horrors that he saw as an ambulance driver in WWI. I wouldn't be surprised if major he wrote the story was a means to warn people to avoid war at all costs since it was so awful for him. If you've read and enjoyed the book, I guess it isn't a bad idea to watch this, but be warned that the tone changes drastically from book to movie. This is a much better pick as a romance movie than a war movie, though I doubt this will be at the top of your watchlist since it's kind of old. It stays pretty close to the book, which I know a lot of people can very particular about. To all prospective viewers, I'll say that it will likely come off as cheesy even if you love old movies or Earnest Hemingway's books. Overall Rating: 3.8/10.

Many critics didn't like this movie when it was first released and still don't if reviews on IMDb are anything to go by. I think that many films, especially from the late 50's and early 60's, took a critical hammering at the time because they seemed old-fashioned in the light of the great changes in cinema that were just starting. But now, over 50 years later, a film such as "A Farewell to Arms" can be evaluated more dispassionately, and as the film is actually set 40 years before it was made, it is now relatively free of the baggage of 1957 and Selznick's interference – I feel that it has far more merit than some would allow. The film follows Hemingway's novel with Rock Hudson's Lt Frederick Henry wounded while serving as an ambulance driver in Italy during WW1. While recuperating, he falls in love with an English nurse, Catherine Barkley, played by Jennifer Jones. After returning to the front, he is caught up in the retreat of the Italian army, and almost executed as a traitor. With as much danger from his own side as from the enemy he decides to desert to Switzerland, taking the now pregnant Catherine with him. Although they reach safety, tragedy awaits. The final scenes of this film are harrowing and haunting; they also put to rest any doubts about Rock Hudson's acting ability. A major criticism of the film is that Jennifer Jones at 38 was too old for the part. From my reading of the novel, Catherine Barkley is an indeterminate age, but she would seem to be older than the reviewer who claims she was 21. After all, she tells Lt Henry that she had been engaged for 8 years to someone who was killed on the Somme – surely Hemingway wasn't suggesting that she had become engaged when she was 13 years old. The affair is based on fact, details of which didn't emerge until after Hemingway's death. Hemingway was an ambulance driver in Italy, was wounded and did fall in love with his nurse. Her name was Agnes von Kurowsky, and she was actually an American. If you Google her name, there are quite a few of photographs of her; it's easy to see why Ernest fell for her – she was gorgeous. But she was also 7 years older than the 19-year-old Hemingway. They didn't run away to Switzerland together, in fact Hemingway was invalided back to America and never saw her again. She sent him a letter from Italy, "…I am now and always will be too old, and that is the truth, and I can't get away from the fact that you are just a boy – a kid". He was dumped. It affected him deeply, and Agnes turns up in a number of his stories. "In Love and War", starring Sandra Bullock, is a well-made, but somewhat fictionalised account of the real story. So there you are, Jennifer Jones was 6 years older than Rock Hudson, probably not the ages the novel vaguely suggests, but I feel too much has been made of this aspect. Oh, just for the record, Jennifer Jones looks fantastic for an 'old lady' of 38.Technically there is much to admire – the scenes of the Italian army advancing and retreating are amazing, while Mario Nascimbene composed a lavish score with a recurring raindrop motif that is very effective within the context of the story. The novel was adapted into a play in 1930, which all the films have drawn material from. "A Farewell to Arms" was first filmed in 1932 starring Gary Cooper, and also appears in a slightly different form as one of the segments in "Hemingway's Adventures of a Young Man". But I feel that Selznick's 1957 film is the best version, and still has a lot to offer.

Of the top 6 reviews I currently see here, 3 are slamming Jennifer Jones for being too old, 1 is slamming producer David Selznick for being in the decline of his career, 1 is whining that it's not like the book, and 1 is slamming writer Hemingway for not doing any fighting in the war (Um... he was an ambulance driver).While this film may not deserve an Academy award for best picture, it certainly deserves a decent review on IMDb dedicated to the film itself. So here goes my attempt."A Farewell to Arms" is a lavish production of a love story set against the backdrop of World War I. In that respect it's in the same genre as other classic war romances "Gone with the Wind", "Casablanca" and "Platoon ". Haha just checking to see if you're paying attention. Everyone knows "Casablanca" was not set in a war but an occupation.Where "Farewell" differs from these other classics is in the distribution of war & romance. "Farewell" features far more battle scenes (4) compared to "Gone with the Wind" (zero) and "Casablanca" (zero). The result may be a bit disappointing in the romance department, and several reviewers (as well as the New York Times review on the film's release) have complained about the "lack of chemistry" between the two leads. I think this perception is simply due to the fact that less time is spent setting up the romance, putting more of a burden on the viewer to accept a relationship that simply happens. Viewers may also feel romantically cheated because this is not a traditional romance between two traditional individuals who dream of immediately getting married and having kids and a dog. But in fact this purposely informal, slightly dysfunctional romance is what ultimately made it interesting to me because it marked a change of formula in the age-old Hollywood romance.If you see this movie, pay close attention to Jennifer Jones' excellent portrayal of a reluctant lover who is perhaps suffering from too many demons to actually fall in love completely, the way she wants to. She is riddled with insecurities, conflicts and possibly guilt, making her like the the stereotypical guy who can't commit. Meanwhile Rock Hudson plays a character more like the stereotypical lovesick schoolgirl. If you enjoy stereotype reversals like this, you'll definitely find yourself interested in their "lack of chemistry".Was Jennifer Jones too old (late 30s) to play the role of Katherine as Hemingway had intended her (early 20s)? Probably. Did Jennifer get the part because she was married to producer Selznick? Absolutely. Does any of this make her a bad actress? No way. Short of Vivien Leigh, I think she was the best person to play the role as she did: the troubled lover whose cynical, morbid thoughts were always brewing not far away, despite her outwardly cheerful appearance. Actually I take back the thing about Vivien Leigh being better; the more I think about it, Jennifer was ideal for this sort of character.A subplot involving Vittorio de Sica's war-weary character descending into madness is sure to catch your attention. It was actually my favorite part of the movie, and I wish they had spent more time on this complex character shift as well as his interesting polite antagonism of the church (with a spectacular short speech he says to the priest near the end). But alas, with the romance and the battle scenes already vying for screen time, Vittorio's story only got 2 or 3 dedicated scenes. They were powerful nonetheless.Yes, as others mentioned, the ending seemed abrupt. But after thinking about it, I think it was perfectly in line with some of the interesting & unusual themes that the story set up. In short, this is not a straightforward soldier-meets-girl love story. The conflicts that are presented (particularly in Jennifer Jones' mysteriously troubled psyche) make this romance much more than meets the eye. If you enjoy wartime romances that are not always formulaic love stories (i.e. they may contain hidden dysfunctional surprises), check this one out.