Romancefest 2013: A Farewell to Arms

I’m not normally the type to bitch about whether or not a movie is as good as the book that it was based on, or the other way around. On the rare occasions I’m actually familiar enough with source material to know one way or the other, I attempt to view movies on their own merits – if it’s a good movie, I don’t care if it’s like the book. If it’s exactly like the book and still sucks, it’s still a bad movie. And so on.

So, watching 1932’s A FAREWELL TO ARMS was kind of a new experience for me because the Ernest Hemingway novel it was based on is held in high enough esteem by me and affected me enough when I first read it, that I wasn’t sure if attempting to enjoy a film adaptation would be a fool’s errand or not.

Long story short (too late), the movie was all right. In the end, I don’t think loving the book colored my perceptions one way or the other, but I will say that my main concern was that the movie would alter the ending, and for my money, that’s the best part. For those of you who haven’t read the book or seen SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK (trailer or movie), I won’t spoil the ending for you except to say that it is a tragic and downbeat one, not something Hollywood is known for.

Gary Cooper stars as an American ambulance driver serving in the Italian army during World War I. He strikes up a romance with a Red Cross nurse (Helen Hayes) and the rest of the story involves their attempts to stay together with the war tearing them apart.

The film has entered the public domain, so unfortunately the print available on Netflix Watch Instantly is a little dark and muddy with shitty sound. Still, you can tell in several segments (particularly the sexy ones) that director Frank Borzage was up to some pretty cool visual tricks involving all sorts of suggestive shadows, silhouettes and candle light. There’s also a lot of camera movement for a movie of this age, with several smooth tracking shots.

Gary Cooper is great as always, and both the romance and the hell of war is believable. Up until the final moments, the movie worked as a basic Cliff’s Notes version of the story. The filmmakers kept the tragic ending, but removed Hemingway’s perspective of it, opting for a more transcendental and spiritual finale. This takes an otherwise fairly grounded and modern movie into an antiquated realm of melodrama that was a little disappointing.

That’s where my reading of the book comes in – would I feel this way if I’d never read the book? I don’t know. I just prefer Hemingway’s simplicity and quiet to this film’s last-minute overblown bombast. I find the more reserved approach that much more tragic and emotionally satisfying.