A Farewell to Arms

Dir: Frank Borzage

1932

****

Ernest Hemingway was said to have loathed Frank Borzage's adaptation of his semi-autobiographical novel that covered his time as an Ambulance driver in Italy during the First World War and while I can understand why, I think there is still a lot to be said about it. The one thing Hemingway said he did like about it was the performance by Gary Cooper in the leading role. The author went on to have a rather negative relationship with Hollywood throughout his career but the one thing he insisted on was that Cooper play the lead in the adaptation of his 1940 novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls. The pair who go on to have a life-time friendship, although it was said that neither of them would ever discuss A Farewell to Arms. As good as Cooper was however, I always felt that it was Helen Hayes who really stole the show. Neither character are quite like how they are in the book but is something crazed about Hayes's Nurse Catherine Barkley, and many of her great lines of dialogue were thankfully left in and she delivered them perfectly. Indeed most of my favourite parts of the book are in-tact in the adaptation but certain scenes are mixed up for no apparent reason and the overall relationship between the couple is a little too Hollywood for it to be considered accurate. I'm still surprised that the novel was adapted as early as 1932 as even now the themes are taboo. The parts of the book I found most shocking are all absent in the film, probably for good reason but I would love to see an updated, more authentic adaptation one day. Still, for every scene missing from the book there is a wonderful recreation of one in the film, one of my favourites being the scene in the bar where Cooper's Lieutenant Frederic Henry and Adolphe Manjou's Major Rinaldi go out for the night for a session of heavy drinking and discuss the mystery of a woman's foot in intricate detail, in a manner that only an old soak could. It's the scene whereby you knew it was definitely written by Hemingway but maybe the only one. In avoiding certain subjects and side-stepping around others, the intense romance of the book is somewhat diluted but the performances certainly have the right amount of passion required for it to still be a great film in its own right.