Strong and Moving!

Great Film overall

At first rather annoying in its heavy emphasis on reenactments, this movie ultimately proves fascinating, simply because the complicated, highly dramatic tale it tells still almost defies belief.

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

Spanish Civil War, 1930s. Richard Jordan, an American, has joined up with the Republican side. He is given the tough assignment of blowing up a vitally important bridge. Things get complicated when he falls in love... Based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway.OK-ish, but not great. Plot drifts, and the movie is overly long. Some decent editing and this could have been an hour shorter and much more coherent.Despite starring greats Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman (whose previous film was Casablanca), the performances are unconvincing. Cooper and Bergman don't seem to gel well. The supporting cast are woeful.I haven't read the book, but I am sure it is better than the movie.

It's the Spanish Civil War. Robert Jordan (Gary Cooper) is part of the beleaguered International Brigades. He is ordered to blow up an important bridge. He encounters and is aided by a group of local guerrilla fighters led by Pablo and Pilar. He is taken with fighter Maria (Ingrid Bergman) who was rescued from fascist imprisonment after her Republican mayor father was killed along with her mother.It's an old-fashion overwrought romantic war drama. There isn't much in the way of action in the first half. Ingrid Bergman is every bit of the Hollywood star. There is no denying her beauty but her character is suppose to be haunted and damaged. The acting is all big overwrought old fashion style. It is another time. Gary Cooper is the heroic Gary Cooper. Even the deaths are done in the old fashion ways. Nevertheless, the operation is compelling and there is good tension in the second half.

This is a fine film, very popular in its day for depicting the desperate fight for freedom that even civilians engaged in by choice, at a time when democracy was in fact truly threatened and there was a very real possibility it would disappear from the earth. Because of the bravery of so many men and women of that time, the freedom that many today take for granted was assured. But it is by no means permanent.The film is relatively heavy but certainly many modern films about current events are equally heavy. One is either involved or not but I found it a great story of a small group of people who have survived a great deal of pain in life and who have little to lose. The film presents the characters very well, allowing us to like and understand them. It was shot in Technicolor on realistic locations and beautifully designed by William Cameron Menzies. The music by Victor Young is outstanding.In case anyone may not know, Ingrid Bergman was the choice of Ernest Hemingway. In fact, he went out of his way to see to it that the ballet dancer and actress Vera Zorina, who was originally cast and who had begun shooting the film, was replaced by Bergman. Hemingway also wanted Gary Cooper and no one else to play Robert Jordan. How can these actors be 'miscast' when the author who created the characters felt they were perfect for the roles?

To suggest, as a number of reviews have, that Cooper's acting is wooden is being polite. His words emanate like some parody of a person learning English for the first time, stoned, and in a casket. Granted, some of the lines he is given are terrible ("If I go, you go with me," and about 10 variations of this), but he is supposed to be an actor. At least, the others give some flair to their performance, but Coop was clueless. This is what happens when you get a Republican to play a Hemingway hero in the Spanish Civil War: a truly treasonous performance. As much as I like him in some pictures, such as High Noon, his acting or whatever you call it in FWTBT is deader than Monty Python's Norwegian Blue.