A Great Classic?

Even Hemingway Hated This Hemingway

 A Farewell to Arms (1932) – An American (Cooper) serves with the
ambulance corps of the Italian army during the First World War. When
he mistakenly stops at an English hospital, he meets a beautiful
nurse (Hayes) and they fall in love. The dangers of his job and the
rules of the Army tear them apart, and they will have to fight their
way back to each other.

Directed by Frank
Borzage

Starring Gary
Cooper, Helen Hayes, Adolphe Menjou

Why I Liked It –
The stars are OK.

Here’s another movie where I have to remind myself – it’s all
right NOT to like a classic movie. Fortunately, I’m not alone.
Ernest Hemingway, who wrote the book upon which the movie is based,
hated this version as well. The book was his first bestseller, and this was the first movie made from one of his stories. Sadly, the
studio wanted a wartime romance story. They offered two endings. One was consistent with Hemingway’s novel, and the other
was a more “Hollywood ending.” The studio’s approach overlooks
the brutality of war that Hemingway made central to the novel. What
resulted was a thin romance storyline set against a sanitized and
rarely visible conflict. Plus, while some movies from the early part
of the 20^th century have aged well, this one feels every
bit of its age.

“A Farewell to
Arms” has solid leads in Helen Hayes, whose career would last for
90 years. Gary Cooper, whose career had just taken off in the late
1920s, would soar to mega-stardom in the following two decades, and
the ever-smooth Adolphe Menjou as the bon vivant Italian surgeon,
Rinaldi. While Hayes’ casting as an English nurse was
questioned even at the time, she’s more than capable as always.
Cooper made a legendary career playing strong, heroic leads. (He) is
a drinker and womanizer at first but “she) brings him to a
different place in his life. Menjou was another well-known actor of
the day. His well-dressed, man of sophistication characters
translated easily to the sound era. The leads don’t get much
help from the script. A modern version of the movie would
spend more screen time on the challenge of a wartime environment for
a love story. Faced with a world where you may die at any moment,
are the “rules” of normal society always apply?

Where the movie
really faltered for me was in the production phase. Coming only five
years after “The Jazz Singer”, this movie still feels like a
silent movie. The one major battle scene is pure silent movie style.
Cooper’s acting shows flashes of the older style where everything
was conveyed in facial and body expressions. None of this would have
bothered the audiences of that time. The acting style was familiar
and therefore comfortable. It’s only the modern audience who will
find it off-putting.

I will give one
nod to the script/direction. They made this movie in that period
before the Production Code would clamp its moralistic fist around
Hollywood. Consequently, we get a look at extramarital sex and
pregnancy then you would see just a few years later.

When the closing
credits ran, I realized that I’d never bought into the romance, and
was underwhelmed by the production values of the movie. Contemporary
reviews agree with my thoughts to a large degree. Modern critics
give it better reviews. Some say it’s the best
version of a Hemingway novel ever. It would receive four Oscar
nominations, winning twice.

But, just because
some people think it’s a classic, I don’t have to agree.

Rating – ** Not
Impressed