A Farewell to Arms (1932)

User Rating:

6.5/10   

Director:

Frank Borzage

Writers:

Ernest Hemingway (novel)
Benjamin Glazer (screenplay) ...

Release Date:

8 December 1932 (USA)

Genre:

Romance | War | Drama

Tagline:

Every woman who has loved will understand.

Plot:

A tale of the love between ambulance driver Lt. Henry and Nurse Catherine Barkley during World War I...

Plot Keywords:

Ambulance Driver | Nurse | Italy | Hospital | Marital Separation

Awards:

Won 2 Oscars. Another 2 nominations

Cast

Helen Hayes	...	Catherine Barkley
Gary Cooper	...	Lieutenant Frederic Henry
Adolphe Menjou	...	Major Rinaldi
Mary Philips	...	Helen Ferguson
Jack La Rue	...	Priest
Blanche Friderici	...	Head Nurse
Mary Forbes	...	Miss Van Campen
Gilbert Emery	...	British Major

Runtime:

80 min | Spain:83 min | USA:89 min (original version) | UK:79 min (DVD version)

Country:

USA

Language:

English

Color:

Black and White

Sound Mix:

Mono (Western Electric Noiseless Recording)

Certification:

Canada:PG (Ontario) | South Korea:12 | Finland:K-12 (1996) | Finland:S (1989) | UK:PG | USA:Approved (PCA #4306-R, 9 May 1938 for re-release)

Filming Locations:

Paramount Ranch - 2813 Cornell Road, Agoura, California, USA

Company:

Paramount Pictures

Trivia:

To the modern discerning eye, the use of miniatures is apparent in some scenes. If one looks very closely at the first scene, ambulance trucks driving up a winding mountain road will be noted to be well crafted miniatures.

Quotes:

Catherine Barkley: [Catherine comes to tend a wounded Henry] Hello, darling!
Lieutenant Frederic Henry: Catherine!
[she kisses him]
Lieutenant Frederic Henry: You're lovely.
Catherine Barkley: Are you badly hurt?
Lieutenant Frederic Henry: You're lovely.
Catherine Barkley: [concerned] Oh my poor darling, it's your leg, isn't it?
Lieutenant Frederic Henry: You're the loveliest thing I ever saw.

Movie Connections:

Featured in Rock Hudson's Home Movies (1992)

Soundtrack:

Tristan und Isolde

All's Fair in Love and War

A FAREWELL TO ARMS (Paramount, 1932), directed by Frank Borzage, is the first, so far, of three screen adaptations to Ernest Hemingway's classic 1930 novel. It is a tender love story set against the background of the Great War (World War I) involving two young people, Frederic Henry (Gary Cooper), an American lieutenant and ambulance driver in the Italian unit, and Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes), a war nurse, who meet first in the hospital, then again during an air raid (where she refers to him as a lunatic) and finally at a social function. Major Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou), Frederic's Italian friend, happens to be in love with Catherine, but after Rinaldi leaves Helen alone to get them both a drink, Fredric enters the scene, converses with her and gives her a kiss, and getting a slap across the face for his trouble. At that moment, however, Catherine has a change of heart and immediately becomes attracted to the young soldier and forgetting about Rinaldi, who witnesses his defeat. As time passes, Catherine and Frederic become an inseparable pair, and after he marches off to war, Catherine communicates with him by mail. Unknown to Catherine, her letters, which go through Rinaldi via postal inspection, has stamped "return to sender" on all 20 envelopes claiming he doesn't want his friend to "lose his head over a woman," but in reality is jealous over their relationship. Unaware of their earlier secret marriage ceremony performed at the hospital following Frederic's injury, and of her pregnancy, by which she has gone to Switzerland to have the baby, it is Rinaldi who eventually makes amends by disclosing Catherine's whereabouts to Frederic after going AWOL to try and find her.

The supporting casts consists of Mary Phillips as Helen Ferguson, a nurse and Catherine closest friend who objects to her continued romance with the young American; Jack LaRue, noted for playing villains and gangsters during this period of his career, as a soft-spoken Italian priest; Blanche Frederici as the stern head nurse; Mary Forbes as Miss Van Campen; and Henry Armetta, Paul Porcasi, Herman Bing and Gilbert Emery in smaller roles, among others. Adolphe Menjou offers fine and memorable support. He is quite convincing, right down to his spoken Italian dialect.

A highly popular war drama in its day, which concentrates more on the relationship between a lieutenant and a nurse than soldiers on the battlefield, A FAREWELL TO ARMS earned itself an Academy Award nomination for Best Picture of 1932-33, losing to CAVALCADE (Fox, 1933). It was also honored for best sound recording, art direction and photography, but none for its acting. Director Frank Borzage brings out the tenderness and simplicity of the young couple in love as he had done on numerous occasions during his several years at the Fox Film studios, particularly the initial three silent dramas that established the popular team of Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell (SEVENTH HEAVEN, 1927; STREET ANGEL, 1928; and LUCKY STAR, 1929). In fact, had Hemingway sold his novel to the producers at Fox, A FAREWELL TO ARMS would definitely have been awarded to the popular team of Gaynor and Farrell under Borzage's direction. Yet similarities between Gaynor and Farrell and Hayes and Cooper go by the way of their sizes. Both Gaynor and Hayes were short in appearance while Cooper and Farrell stood very tall, especially opposite their shorter leading ladies. But because of the sensitivity and care as enacted by the main characters, it goes without saying that Hayes and Cooper appear to be far better suited as Hemingway characters than Gaynor and Farrell would have been had they been offered this assignment. At first glance, Gary Cooper gives the impression of being an odd choice in playing Fredric Henry, considering solid actors as Fredric March or Clark Gable (on loan from MGM) might have made a go of this, but in the finished product, the film conveys Cooper to be properly cast after all, ranking this as one of his most finer performances. He was especially effective during the hospital scene which finds his face with tears flowing down his cheeks with spoken shakiness in his voice after learning that Catherine, in the maternity ward, might not survive. After watching the conclusion of A FAREWELL TO ARMS which has Frederic carrying Catherine towards the open window, one cannot help noticing the similarities between this and that similar scene used for Samuel Goldwyn's literary screen carnation to WUTHERING HEIGHTS (1939) featuring Merle Oberon and Laurence Olivier. Great scenes are not made, they're remade.

The pace to the story is occasionally slow, with the early portions of the story lacking musical underscoring, but does pick up during its second half. As with many stories about couples meeting, starting out not liking one another, and thus, becoming an inseparable pair, A FAREWELL TO ARMS turns out to be one of the best of its kind. Other than the character study and battle scenes, the movie offers several bonuses, especially with some of its effective camera techniques. One such scene that occurs in the hospital where the injured Frederic Henry is being wheeled in the hospital from a platform table where the camera assumes the place of the character, taking focus as to what he is witnessing, followed by doctors and nurses looking down and talking directly into the camera with the Frederic answering the questions, and concluding with an extreme close up of Catherine's face with only her right eye taking full focus into the camera as she kisses and talks to her wounded soldier. The camera taking the place of the character technique would be used memorably more than a decade later with two notable "film noir" mysteries, LADY IN THE LAKE (MGM, 1946) and DARK PASSAGE (WB, 1947). While these films have used this method to an extent to most of the story, A FAREWELL TO ARMS presents this technique briefly but effectively.

Remade twice during the 1950s, first as FORCE OF ARMS (Warner Brothers, 1950) starring William Holden and Nancy Olson, and later under its original title in 1957 for 20th Century-Fox starring Jennifer Jones and Rock Hudson, the third, being the better known of the earlier two, might have surpassed the original had it not been so awkward, overlong (two and-a-half hours) and overblown. The original 1932 production, eliminating many key elements from the novel, is better acted and not long enough to cause any viewer lose interest. Because of the remakes in the 1950s, the 1932 original was taken out of circulation, with availability for viewing the original very hard to obtain, and chances of it never to be seen or heard about again. Fortunately, prints did survive, leaving chances of A FAREWELL TO ARMS to surface again. Finally, as early as 1981, the initial version to A FAREWELL TO ARMS made its long awaited rebirth, on public television, initially as part of its weekly SPROCKETS series. Ever since then, television and later public domain video prints presented the original Hemingway drama 10 minutes shorter to its original 90 minutes of screen time, along with occasional poor picture quality, and even worse, the elimination of the original opening and closing credits taken from reissue prints with newer opening title cards and the substitution of the Paramount logo with that of a 1950s Warner Brothers shield, and the elimination of the closing casting credits. When A FAREWELL TO ARMS premiered on Turner Classic Movies on Sunday, February 15, 2004, as part of the cable channel's annual 31 days of Oscar, it became another long-awaited event. Aside from having it shown in its original 90 minute presentation, the Paramount logo that opens and closes the movie has been restored along with the closing cast list, as originally played in theaters back in 1932.

Has A FAREWELL TO ARMS stood the test of time? Chances are with its newly restored and clearer picture quality presentation currently available on TCM, it may stir up much more interest than the latter remakes. It also gives an insite look to the early film career of famous stage actress Helen Hayes (1900-1993) at her peak, riding high on her success in her Academy Award winning performance of THE SIN OF MADELON CLAUDET (MGM, 1931), many years before achieving popularity to a new and younger generation of movie goers in the 1970s in old lady character parts, beginning with AIRPORT (1970), a performance that outshined all others in this all-star disaster flick, and the television series THE SNOOP SISTERS. But as it stands, A FAREWELL TO ARMS, a poignant love story, which may not stir up as many tears and sobs as it once did way back when, it is, however, a worthy novel to screen offering, ranking this the first, and best, of two remakes combined.