For all the hype it got I was expecting a lot more!

Excellent but underrated film

This is a coming of age storyline that you've seen in one form or another for decades. It takes a truly unique voice to make yet another one worth watching.

Easily the biggest piece of Right wing non sense propaganda I ever saw.

Beautifully produced version of Hemingway's saga of his early journey towards manhood. Amazing supporting cast is a mix of veterans and rising talent of the time with assured direction. The entire cast does well but there are a few standouts. Paul Newman does good character work as a punch drunk has-been boxer, Eli Wallach has some fun with his conscripted soldier and Arthur Kennedy offers his usual thoughtful work as the lead's goodhearted but dominated father. Also kept an eye out for a blink and you'll miss her appearance by Sharon Tate in her screen bow.The problem lies in Richard Beymer in the lead. He's not bad but he's just sort of there lacking the charisma to anchor such a pageant over its extended running time. Someone with the ability to hold the camera's gaze is needed, either Steve McQueen or Albert Finney who were the proper age at the time would have been better casting. As it stands the film is good but missing the key element that would have made it more.

I saw this movie in junior high and high school on television. I loved it very much, and it actually got me interested in Hemingway's Nick Adams stories. Jessica Tandy is at her best in this film as Nick's long suffering mom. Arthur Kennedy is good , too. It may not have won any Oscar's--the simplicity and innocence of such coming of age stories are not always artsy-artsy enough for the Hollywood crowd--but in its quiet way this is a great film. Michael Pollard as George is wonderful. Most will remember him as Moss in BARNEY AND CLYDE but he plays wonderfully opposite Beymer's Nick. Paul Newman was great as the boxer. The reason I liked this movie so much was because it was not a typical Paul Newman role. Whoever guessed that Newman can really act? He proved it in this small part. I love the film. I only wish it was available on DVD--director's cut--if it is will somebody let me know. I really don't want to buy the entire HEMINGWAY COLLECTION now being sold to get a DVD of this timeless film classic

The motion picture, based on Hemingway's autobiographical "Nick Adams" stories, depicts the picaresque experiences of an aspiring writer (Richard Beymer) who leaves his home in 1917 to learn about life… Near the beginning, the young man, thrown off a freight train, encounters the punch drunk fighter and his black manager and friend, Bugs (Juano Hernandez). The Battler, in his fifties, was once a top fighter, but he declined into second-rate matches, prison and panhandling (Rocky Graziano in reverse!).As he and Nick sit in the woods by a fire, the pitiful, half-alive Battler speaks roughly, sometimes mumbling incoherently, about his life… He searches pathetically for his thoughts and memories, makes useless swinging gestures in the air, and reflexively punches his fist into his palm—a man barely in control of his mind or muscles… This is the kind of self-effacing, grotesque-makeup part critics often like, and many thought he brought compassion as well, as physical reality to it… Others believed that he overplayed it almost to the point of caricature; Bosley Crowther of The New York Times said, "It is Paul Newman's very good fortune that he isn't recognizable… for he is simply terrible."

This film attempts to compile all or most of Hemingway's Nick Adams stories into one complete whole. The effect is a coming of age story that ends on a bitter/semi-sweet note. Along the way you see a series of stories populated by well known actors and actresses.There is a sequence that reminds one of Farewell to Arms (wounded ambulance driver falls in love with nurse, who eventually dies in his arms).There is the overbearing, controlling, religious mother and the anguished father (who eventually takes his own life).There is the hard boiled newspaper editor, who gives sound hard boiled advice.I liked the movie, but I am unsure whether I would recommend it to someone else.