Two weeks back, I reviewed the 1932 movie adaptation of A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway. Even though it wasn’t exactly faithful to the source material, it was a fascinating translation that no one else could’ve done. But, what if I were to tell you that there was a more “accurate” version of the same story? It’s the 1957 adaptation produced by David O’Selznick starring Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones. Although it’s truer to the plot than the 1932 flick was, this version is simply not as interesting because of the performances, sudden tonal changes, and how it’s trying way too hard at being Gone With the Wind.

Before I get into my review, I want to address something. If it weren’t for David O’Selznick, we wouldn’t have the uncut 1932 adaptation of A Farewell to Arms. During the time of the Production Code, films were reviewed to ensure that they weren’t promoting anything that could be interpreted as immoral or taboo. When the film was re-released in 1938, 12 minutes of footage had to be cut to meet the code’s standards. Luckily, O’Selznick managed to acquire an original negative of the film since he was keen on remaking it. In other words, he helped to preserve the very first movie adaptation of a Hemingway novel. That is the only bone I’m giving to O’Selznick.

As mentioned earlier, it’s more faithful to the source material than the earlier film was. Even though it doesn’t do the copy-and-paste maneuver that For Whom the Bell Tolls did, it barely does anything interesting with it. And when it did, it made me think of other movies. In the opening sequence, there are shots of the Italian countryside with Frederick biking his way to the town he’s stationed at. In addition, there’s narration done by Rock Hudson describing that area. This was only to show how accurate the flick was going to be as opposed to the original, but that voiceover doesn’t show up ever again. For Whom the Bell Tolls does the same thing with the narration but at the end. Also, don’t get me started with every time there was a shot of a bell chiming.

The movie obviously centers around the romance between Frederick the American Lieutenant and Catherine the English nurse, but in this adaptation, they don’t have much chemistry. Hudson is fine as Frederick, yet he plays his role too soft-spoken. He is less so as the film progresses. My big problem with the acting is Jennifer Jones. Many people have said, including Hemingway himself, that she was miscast as Catherine. Some of that criticism has to do with her age, saying that she was too old to play the nurse. This doesn’t bother me because the real-life person that Catherine was based on was actually 7 years older than Hemingway himself. My issue is that Jones is too hammy, immature, and focused on HER acting to make not only the character, but also the relationship believable. This became apparent in her first scene when Catherine meets Frederick. Jones spends a good chunk of that time putting towels away and speaking more to the camera than to Hudson when Catherine tells Frederick about her dead fiance. Then later on as Catherine is in labor and is given gas to ease the pain, Jones goes into hysterics that felt like an eternity and such a contrast to the quiet dignity that Helen Hayes possessed in a similar scene from the earlier version. I blame O’Selznick for this casting choice because he was married to her, and he liked to use her in many of his films like Duel in the Sun and Portrait of Jennie. From what I understand, he was obsessed with her. 

However, I have to compliment a few supporting performances. Mercedes McCambridge and Elaine Strich play two nurses at the hospital which Frederick recovers at. McCambridge (who is best known for her Oscar-winning performance in the 1949 adaptation of All the King’s Men) plays the head nurse Miss Van Campen who won’t take any BS from Frederick. This is especially true when it’s revealed that he has stashed plenty of alcohol under his bed. Strich (who is best remembered for playing Joanne in the original Broadway production of Company) plays Helen Ferguson – a nurse who gives Frederick the booze in the first place. While this role is reduced in this version of A Farewell to Arms, Strich makes the character memorable in the most Elaine-Strich way possible: sassy while looking like she needs a martini. In fact, she even holds a cigarette in the way that only Strich could do it while Helen tries to knock some sense into Catherine about Frederick. I’ll drink to that!

The strongest performer is Vittorio de Sica. He is best known as a director of several Italian neorealism films like Bicycle Thieves, yet in here, he takes on the role of Rinaldi. He plays the charming aspect of the character well, but in the second half, he channels the madness that Rinaldi displays as the soldiers and civilians walk for miles and miles after getting evacuated from a bombing. This behavior leads him to be interrogated by Italian military officials (really Germans in disguise). De Sica gives Rinaldi what dignity is left as the character slowly loses his mind. His character is executed shortly after (something that isn’t in the book). De Sica received an Oscar nomination for his performance. I’m not sure if he deserved it, but I’m glad he was recognized.

The next problem that I have with this adaptation is the sudden tonal changes. Even though it retains a realistic vibe throughout, there are times, in which the tone abruptly alters. After Frederick gets injured in a pretty gruesome bombing, he gets transported to the hospital by the most incompetent Italian staff members possible. One of them drives like a lunatic, and two of them shove him in an elevator and improperly put him into his bed. I understand that Frederick is not exactly a likable character, yet I wondered what he did to deserve this. And, director Charles Vidor (no relation to King Vidor) executes this sequence like a comedy, and it made me think these people were trained by the Three Stooges. Then, it shifts into a romance with Catherine and Frederick bonding as he recovers. Then, it changes into a war drama with the evacuation, and then back into a romantic comedy when a pregnant Catherine and Frederick make home in Switzerland. This inconsistent tone was off-putting.

Finally, this movie is desperate to be Gone With the Wind. For nearly 20 years, O’Selznick wanted to recapture the magic without fully understanding what made that film special in the first place. This is apparent from the moment the slow-moving title card shows up in A Farewell to Arms. While both films deal with war and romance as well as contain misplaced humor (let’s not forget the scene in Gone With the Wind in which a black servant tries to catch a chicken), those are the only things they have in common. One of those flicks is a multifaceted drama about a spoiled Southern woman trying to regain the life she had before the Civil War, and the other is a simple story about a Florence-Nightengale-Syndrome of a romance. Say what you want about Gone With the Wind, there are a lot of things that happen that would have altered the tale if any of that was omitted, thus justifying its run time of nearly four hours, and it maintains the same tone throughout. 

With A Farewell to Arms, it felt like it needed to pad out the runtime in order to be different from the black-and-white version as well as be taken seriously. It also doesn’t help that it uses shock value for the sake of it. For example, when the soldiers and civilians are walking after they got evacuated (which is not in the book), there are shots of a soldier choking a civilian to death because that latter refused to give up his seat at the back of the ambulance truck for a woman and her baby. Later, there’s one shot of a dead woman lying on the ground with an infant still latched onto her nipple. Do these add anything to the story? No, they don’t. When Gone With the Wind contained disturbing elements, they were more impactful because they were through the eyes of someone who had been pampered all her life. In this version of A Farewell to Arms, it’s from Frederick’s – a man who had been at the front for a while – perspective. One could argue that he sees more of the horror of war and wants to give that up in order to be with Catherine more, but the film barely gives Hudson opportunities to show those reactions. This was O’Selznick’s last attempt to cash in on Gone With the Wind because after the 1957 adaptation of A Farewell to Arms flopped at the box office, he ceased producing movies.

With all the criticism leveled at it, there were good things about it. The ending was well executed. It’s the same one that shows up in the book, but Vidor adds a clip of Catherine telling Frederick to never forget her while a sad Frederick walks away from the hospital. Another good element was the war sequences. They felt realistic and even gritty at times. At one point, Frederick and Rinaldi are covered with sand during the evacuation scene. The best parts were the bombs going off. They looked like real explosions that could actually be dangerous. There were bombs that went off in the earlier version, but they felt more theatrical. I was very emotionally invested when Frederick got injured and his bloody legs were revealed. On top of that, he’s with a soldier when the explosive went off, and that man died on impact covering Frederick.

In summary, the 1957 version of A Farewell to Arms is one that tries to be many things, but ends up falling flat on its face. It’s not as dull as For Whom the Bell Tolls, yet it’s not as fascinating of a watch as the original is. I hesitate to recommend this flick, but I will say that if one wants to watch every adaptation of a Hemingway novel and every David O’Selznick-produced movie, I won’t stop them. I advise them to do a drinking game if one chooses to view this version. 

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