A farewell to Arms
1957
Directed by Charles Vidor



“A Farewell to Arms” is not a good movie in my opinion. The bleak spirit of Hemmingway’s novel is lost in the transition to the silver screen. While the film generally sticks to the events of the novel, (with some minor and major changes at various points) and some of the dialogue is intact. The feelings evoked by the novel’s plaintive and single minded writings are gone. And it has been replaced by a sweeping Hollywood-ized version of ‘love’. The lengthy narrative descriptions of landscapes are missing in action as well. The first bit of the novel where Lt. Henry describes tired men marching through the mud has been replaced by a simple “it was nice…” , by Rock Hudson in his wooden way. To sum up the similarities of the novel and the film is as simple as this: They end beyond the context of events and characters.

History tells us that the events of “A Farewell to Arms” are accurate by dates, and since nearly none of us were there, none of us can testify how accurate A Farewell to Arms is aside from the dates. To me, “A Farewell to Arms” Is like some small skirmish is being fought with lots of people.The chaos and furious roar of a war just isn’t present. In fact it’s kind of boring and uneventful. There is one fantastic ‘war’ scene in the film, when the priest stays behind with the wounded and dying in a bombarded building after a general retreat was announced. That particular scene was well constructed. And the scene where the mountain is being bombed, while the explosions are in place and it is very loud a certain intensity is lost due to the overly tame treatment of violence in the film. The amount of extras is impressive but for the most part all they do is march up and down in straight lines.



Among the rose colored hues of this film, a shallow, a drawn out feeling lurks. The feeling is there after the film is finished and it decreased what little enjoyment I did derive from the film. The film is overly long, and wastes stretches of time developing two boring people who you really do not feel that terribly passionate about. In my opinion, “A Farewell to Arms” marks the beginning of the end of classic ‘epics’ and blockbusters. Spartacus and Ben Hur came after it and exceeded at being old fashioned entertainment. The full realization of modern American cinema in the 60s was a godsend. Finally, complex characterizations allowed films to expand past ham fisted theatrics with levels of subtlety rare in previous big studio films. This adaptation of “A Farewell to Arms” is in my opinion more a farewell to the things that held a faithful adaptation of “A Farewell to Arms” back. Sadly, the novel was never fully realized on screen.