In Praise of Idealism

 For Whom The Bell Tolls (1943) – An idealistic American fighting against the Fascists during the Spanish Civil War falls in love with a beautiful young woman.  After watching her parents be killed in front of her, she finds a new life with him.

Directed by: Sam Wood                        Starring: Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Katina Paxinou

Why I Liked It – Bergman at her most beautiful, Cooper being the idealistic fool, some great suspense.

There is an irony to this movie because producer/director Sam Wood was an ardent anti-Communist in the final decade of his life.  Yet his greatest accomplishment, Ernest Hemingway’s “For Whom The Bell Tolls”, has the Soviet backed Republican side as the heroes.  He did as much as he could to minimize any glamorization of that fact in the movie.  Wood characterized the script as being much more about the romance between Jordan (Cooper) and Maria (Bergman).  While that romance is central to the story, Wood leans too far that way, which reduces the movie, in my opinion.

At it’s best, this is an amazing story.  A story of two people who find each other in the midst of the madness of the Spanish Civil War.  Both the Germans and the Soviets used this war as a testing ground for the larger war to come.  The horrors committed both during the war and in its aftermath are worth studying.  Like many idealists of the 1930s, Hemingway went to Spain to help the cause.  That idealism shines through in both the book and the movie.  It’s an emotion that is less popular today, so some viewers will sneer.  That’s their loss.

Beyond the history and politics, there is a fine cast at work.  This role is right in Gary Cooper’s wheelhouse.  Idealistic to the point of his own potential destruction.  Believing that what he is doing is necessary, but tormented by what he has done.  Ingrid Bergman had just finished “Casablanca” and is radiant here.  Her performance as Ilsa always strikes me as stiff, but she is powerful here.  The pain she brings to the role of a 19 year old girl who watched her parents shot by the Fascist forces, and then was repeatedly sexually assaulted by them is amazing.  Her short hair for this role legendarily resulted in keeping the song “As Time Goes By” in “Casablanca”.  They were going to replace it, which would require re-shooting some scenes.  But the haircut made that impossible.

Special attention to Katina Paxinou, who plays Pilar, the powerful leader of the resistance group that helps Jordan.  This was her movie debut, after a distinguished stage career in her native Greece.  She won both an Academy Award and a Golden Globe for her work.  In Pilar, we find the true strength of the revolutionary group that supports Jordan in his assignment to blow up a bridge.  Her husband, Pablo, was once a brave fighter himself, but now is a drunken coward hiding in the hills.  When the moment arrives, it is Pilar who makes the hard decisions.  Paxinou is outstanding.  Veteran character actor Akim Tamiroff brings depth to the morally dissolute husband.

The movie suffers from feeling that it needed to make a great “literary” movie out of great literature.  It’s total run time is right around two and a half hours.  There’s a really solid two hours here.  My only other complaint is there very end, where the decision was made to include some Hemingway internal dialogue for Jordan as a voiceover.  There is no need for it at all.  It spoiled the end of the movie for me.  The scenes before it are some of the most exciting in the whole story.  So the let down was strong.

Great performances from the days when idealism wasn’t a dirty word.  The good parts more than make up for the less good.

Rating – *** Worth A Look