everything you have heard about this movie is true.

If the ambition is to provide two hours of instantly forgettable, popcorn-munching escapism, it succeeds.

The film's masterful storytelling did its job. The message was clear. No need to overdo.

There's no way I can possibly love it entirely but I just think its ridiculously bad, but enjoyable at the same time.

Gary Cooper is an ambulance driver who is in the middle of combat in World War II. Life is tenuous for everyone. He meets a nurse, played by Helen Hayes, who has just lost her fiancé to the war. They hook up and he leaves. The result of their encounter is her pregnancy. Because Cooper is friends with a carouser with whom he inhabits bars and brothels, his friend, feeling that Cooper could be harmed by this woman's situation, intercepts letters she has sent to him. So she feels he has no feelings for her. He sends letters to her, but she has been transferred to another unit hospital. So communications have broken down and this leads to great pain. The ending is quite emotional (perhaps a bit too emotional) with some real overacting from two really good actors. Hemingway, apparently, hated the movie version of his book. It's worth a look but there are better movies featuring his work.

A very curious coincidence. Watching, in luminous black and white cinematography, Adolphe Menjou in army uniform walk around the rooms of some fairly palatial château requisitioned by the military in WW1, instantly recalled an all but identical scene shot some 25 years later (same actor, same war, same costume, b&w photography, setting, character, adjacent country). It seemed far too close to be just a coincidence - did director Stanley Kubrick make a deliberate connection in his 1957 film "Paths of Glory"?But what an extraordinary difference in tone however between the two films? A Farewell to Arms is surely exclusively a traditional woman's picture, classy soap in fact. Shirtless young star Cooper - eye-candy personified - has an untroubled war, fussed over by a minor army of female nurses, and, presumably pre-Hays code, quite explicitly takes the virginity of a young nurse he has not long met; and, central drama in the film, nature takes its course. Tragedy when it comes is played out in comfort, the best medical attention, where the loved ones are together and able to say their full good byes in dignity and privacy.In contrast the grittiness of WW1 drama "Paths of Glory", the blistering attack on officer ambition at the cost of the common soldier, the cynicism - unsurprisingly too strong to be shown where it was set: France - had few equals in its tone of moral indignation. Its central character, played by Kirk Douglas, held to the flames of forced moral choice. IMDb gives it thoroughly deserved 8.5, this film just 6.6. Hovering in judgement too over A Farewell to Arms is the authentic story of front-line WW1 nurses "Testament of Youth" where duty and sacrifice was the iron rule, not fluffiness.So how did this silly soap-fest come to be made just 15 years after the events depicted? Europe was scarred by WW1, France by its immense loss of fighting men and suffering of civilians caught in the fighting. Hollywood in 1932, it seems, just sought bums on seats. History was safely in its graves and could be left to turn as it wished. Was Paths of Glory Kubrick atoning for Farewell to Arms? I strongly suspect it was."what does this war mean to me? What does anything mean to me? I must find her"

This film has, at the beginning several instances of behavior that many films utilize that make me wonder if the behavior was intended by the author, director, or actor. A natural plot point was exhibited when the ambulances were going uphill & someone in back pleaded for the truck to stop because a wounded soldier was 'bleeding to death'. The ambulance could not stop because it was on a grade and stopping was impossible. This would show the cruelty of war. However, when the ambulance reaches the hospital the lieutenant in charge of the ambulance flirts with nurses before arranging for off-loading patients at the hospital. Gary Cooper, as Lieutenant Henry, does his cute-character bit while wounded soldiers are dying in the ambulances.Did the author intend for the lieutenant to behave with such cruelty? The lieutenant will later desert out of love for his wife. Maybe his whole manner is of a self-involved dandy. But the author has characters mentioning the cruelty of war all the time. But if these people are cruel also, how can they complain.The character doctor Rinaldi says something along the lines that Christians should not mind being killed, presumably because they go on to their 'reward' of heaven. Did the author write this? Did the author intend the flippant way that the doctor says it? The director shoots a shot of an uncaring lieutenant immediately after the ambulance attendant complains that a soldier is bleeding to death. Was this the intention of the author, the director (or editor) making a statement of their own. Maybe this was a decision by Gary Cooper.The nurse and lieutenant may complain about the cruelty of war, but their whole affair was the result of them volunteering to be there. Then they proceed to abandon there posts repeatedly.To me any case to be made for the importance of humanity is undermined by everybody in the 'play' lacking it. The doctor friend of Henry keeps calling Henry his baby & then proceeds to destroy his life by pushing him to alcoholism. Each character seems to say 'I'm human and it is important to be human' & then proceeds to do something cruel. Presumably, the war only ended because of exhaustion and not because of intelligent human thought.I guess what confuses me is the way the characters (or actors) work very hard, which tends to make me sympathetic to them, but when their behavior is cruel a dissonance is created.

Gary Cooper stars as Lieutenant Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver serving in the Italian army during World War I. There he meets and falls in love with a nurse named Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes) but the war looms heavy over the couple's chances for happiness.While this movie feels a bit dated and the war scenes go on too long and seem to be too darkly lit, this is epic romance that ultimately proves hard to take one's eyes off. You root for the characters and want to overcome the odds despite all that stands in their way making the final reality of what ultimately happens all the more potent. A real tear-jerker for the soft hearted this one. Great romance! Let's love tonight for we may not have tomorrow...the harsh reality of war.