A Farewell to Arms (1932)

A Farewell to Arms is an American romantic film drama first released in 1932, directed by Frank Borzage.  The film is based on a novel by Ernest Hemingway and stars Helen Hayes, Gary Cooper, Adolphe Menjou, Mary Philips and Jack La Rue.  Our overall rating for this film is: very good.


During World War I, a young American, Frederick Henry, enlists as an ambulance driver in the Italian army.  He meets and falls in love with a young English nurse, Catherine Barkley.  Badly injured in a bombardment, Henry ends up in a hospital in Milan, where he is cared for by his beloved Catherine.  As Henry recovers, he and Catherine pursue an idyllic romance, which ends all to soon when Henry is sent back to the Front.  When he later hears that Catherine is pregnant with his child, Henry resolves to find her, even if it means deserting from the army...

Frank Borzage’s masterful adaptation of Ernest Hemingway’s 1929 semi-autobiographical novel may at times appear uneven and slightly dated, but it is still a film with great visual impact and harrowing emotional intensity.  The film, a tragic love story set against the backdrop of one of the bloodiest conflicts in history, is most noted for Charles Lang’s evocative expressionistic cinematography.  The photography, lighting and set design conspire to give the film a poetical dreamlike quality, with a striking sense of realism which calls to mind another great WWI film, Lewis Milestone’s All Quiet on the Western Front (1930).

A Farewell to Arms brings together two of Hollywood’s leading lights at the time, Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes.  Although for much of the film Cooper’s performance is a little too restrained, the actor redeems himself in the last few scenes with his heart-breaking portrayal of man who sees his entire world fall apart.  Helen Hayes also brings great sensitivity and is particularly effective in those low-key sequences where her character is separated from her lover.  The film’s depiction of the horrors of war is pretty well restricted to one short but very impressive montage sequence, which conveys the horrifying scale of the brutality and carnage of the First World War.
 
Ernest Hemingway was greatly displeased with this adaptation of his novel.  He felt too much emphasis was given to the central romance, to the extent that much of the background, with its graphic depiction of WWI heroism and suffering, was lost.  His biggest contention was with the film’s modified ending.  Anxious that the original ending was too depressing, the film’s producers decided that an alternative, more optimistic, version be shot.  This bastardised version was only ever shown in provincial cinemas in the United States.  

The film was nominated for four Oscars in 1934 (including Best Picture) and won two – for Best Cinematography and Best Sound Recording.  It was later remade as Force of Arms (1951) by Michael Curtiz and A Farewell to Arms (1957) by Charles Vidor.  Frank Borzage’s version is regarded as the best, and is also widely considered to be the best adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel to date.

© James Travers 2008

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