Spoilers in this review.
Frank Borzage’s A Farewell to Arms aspires to be one of the screen’s great love stories, but it’s ultimately hurt by the fact that the lovers are not very good people, and the movie doesn’t really understand the implications of this. It’s like Casablanca with Bergman going off with Bogart instead of Paul Henreid, and Michael Curtiz not understanding that bad things would result because of that choice.
The picture opens in the middle of World War One, and is one of the few films to deal with the Italian element of that conflict. Frederick Henry (Gary Cooper) is an American who has joined the Italian medical corps, and works as an ambulance driver transporting the wounded from the front. While at the hospital, he meets British nurse Catherine Barkley (Helen Hays), and the two fall in love. Or do they? I was never sure where the two were actually supposed to be in love, or their relationship was psychological way for them to cope with the super-stressful situations around them. This is not a trivial point, as we shall soon see.
Nurses are forbidden from having relationships with anyone and two have to carefully steal away to spend time together. At one point, Frederick actually wounds himself so that he may spend time in the hospital with her. Eventually the two are separated and (spoiler) both decide to desert so that they may be together.
Was desertion an ethically justified decision? I doubt it. If everyone did this, there would be army. Almost be definition, an army consists of a group people who are making sacrifices for a common purpose, and it must be reasonably expected that everyone must do their part.
My complaint is not so much Frederick’s and Catherine’s decision as the movie’s failure to deal with this as a serious issue. It wants so badly to be a great love story that it ignores some of the obvious themes in the story. A movie like Todd Haynes’ Little Children is an example of a film that features a very compelling love story along with the implications of the lover’s actions.
The movie is of course based on the novel by Ernest Hemingway, which I have not read, but I have a feeling is a lot smarter than this film. The movie also suffers from the fact there are two many drippy scenes of the couple talking about how they will love through eternity and blah blah blah. A little but of this type of thing goes a long way.
The movie is very well shot by Charles Bryant Lang Jr. (who won an Oscar for Best Cinematography for this film) and does feature one of Cooper’s best performances. The actor, known for his someone emotionless countenance, here goes all out playing a truly histrionic character. The film is not terrible but it is not the classic that it’s reputed to be. I have a feeling you’ll be much better off picking up the novel.
A Farewell to Arms (1932)