A Farewell to Arms (1932) User Reviews (82)

What Did Papa Expect?

[bkoganbing · 6/10 · 29 August 2006]

When this version of A Farewell to Arms came out, Ernest Hemingway hated this film. They turned his novel and put too much emphasis on the romance angle. When Papa Hemingway said that he obviously did not know Hollywood well at all. If he did just knowing Frank Borzage directed this film should have told him something. Borzage did a whole slew of tender romantic stories in the Thirties like Three Comrades, The Mortal Storm, stuff like that. A Farewell to Arms is definitely in keeping with that tradition.

The one thing that Hemingway did like was the casting of Gary Cooper as the hero Fredric Henry. He and Coop became fast friends right up to when they both died in 1961. He saw in Cooper the ideal Hemingway hero and when Paramount acquired the rights to For Whom the Bells Toll, Hemingway insisted it be done with Cooper or nobody.

Cooper and Helen Hayes made a tender romantic couple in the Borzage tradition, probably more Borzage than Hemingway. But Adolph Zukor and Paramount also knew what sold movie tickets and Paramount was having a lot of financial troubles at this time. The studio nearly went under during the Depression. But Paramount's saviors turned out to be Bing Crosby, Mae West, and Cecil B. DeMille who returned to the studio he helped found.

Helen Hayes made several good films in the early thirties, this one and the one she won an Oscar for, The Sins of Madelon Claudet. But she never became a movie box office draw so she returned to the Broadway stage where she reigned as a Queen.

Adolphe Menjou replete with Italian accent plays Cooper's friend and romantic rival, Major Rinaldi. Menjou was great at playing both American and continental types. Soon he would sign a long term contract with MGM and gain his greatest roles during the sound era.

Hemingway purists might shun A Farewell to Arms, but those who love their screen romances, soggier the better will rave about this film.

Impressionism in the Cinema

[JamesHitchcock · 7/10 · 24 January 2006]

The works of Ernest Hemingway have not always translated well to the cinema. The Gary Cooper/Ingrid Bergman "For Whom the Bell Tolls" and David O. Selznick's version of "A Farewell to Arms", although attractively photographed, are two of the dullest and most slow-moving films ever committed to celluloid. "The Snows of Kilimanjaro" is slightly better, but still by no means as good as it should be, given its stellar cast. Howard Hawks's version of "To Have and Have Not" is a good film, but that is probably because its plot has very little to do with that of the novel on which it is supposedly based.

The 1932 version of "A Farewell to Arms" was the first time a film had been based on one of Hemingway's works, and there is an obvious difference between it and the 1957 remake; it is only slightly more than half the length, at 80 minutes as opposed to 152. Over the quarter-century between the dates of the two films there had been a change in the way Hemingway was seen. In 1932 he was still an up-and-coming young author; by 1957, although he was still alive and only in his late fifties, he had achieved the status of Great American Novelist, and the film that was made in that year suffers from an over-reverential attitude to his work, treating it like a solemn classical text that needed an equally solemn cinematic treatment to do it justice.

The film tells the story of the romance between Frederick, an American volunteer serving with the Italian Army as an ambulance driver, and Catherine, a nurse with the British Red Cross. Frederick deserts and crosses the border into neutral Switzerland, to be with Catherine, whom he has secretly married and who is pregnant.

It has been pointed out that the moral of the film is precisely the opposite of that of "Casablanca". In that film Rick and Ilsa give up their chance of happiness together because "the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world". What matters is the war, and the Allied struggle for victory. In "A Farewell to Arms", however, the moral is that the personal happiness of Frederick and Catherine matters more than the great historical events from which they are escaping. This reversal in emphasis between the two films probably reflects a reversal in public attitudes which took place in the intervening decade between 1932 and 1942. In 1932, a year before Hitler came to power, there was a sense of disillusionment with war, even in those countries which had finished on the winning side in 1914-18; the First World War was widely seen as senseless slaughter. Ten years later, the rise of Nazism and the outbreak of the Second World War had changed attitudes so that it was once again fashionable to talk about a "just war" against evil. (By 1957, during the Cold War, the pendulum had partially swung back in the opposite direction; Selznick's film might have been a flop, but there were some very good anti-war films from that period, such as Kubrick's "Paths of Glory").

Seen from a modern perspective, the film looks and sounds very dated. The sound quality is poor and the action looks jerky. These problems were, of course, common to most films from the early thirties, the very dawn of the sound picture era. (It is remarkable how quickly those problems were overcome, when one compares the likes of "A Farewell to Arms" with, say, "Gone with the Wind" from only seven years later). In some respects, however, the director Frank Borzage was able to turn the technical limitations of the period to his advantage. Large-scale realistic battle sequences would not have been possible at this time, but Borzage nevertheless wanted to give some idea of the horror of war in order to show what Frederick is fleeing from. In order to do this he resorts to a wordless montage sequence composed of brief shots of the battle, backed by some highly dramatic music. The result is a sort of cinematic equivalent of Impressionism, serving to give as vivid an impression of warfare as a more detailed picture ever could. (This sequence was probably the reason the film won the Oscar for "Best Cinematography").

The film is better acted than the 1957 remake. Helen Hayes was less glamorous than Jennifer Jones, and has an even less convincing British accent, but makes a much livelier and more convincing Catherine. Gary Cooper's Frederick is similarly far more animated than Rock Hudson's stony-faced interpretation of the role, and he receives good support from Adolphe Menjou as Frederick's comrade Major Rinaldi. The action is better paced and the film, even if it looks primitive by today's standards, nevertheless has a vigour lacking from many more polished films from more recent times. 7/10

A Memorable Film In Need of Restoration

[gftbiloxi · 7/10 · 28 March 2005]

The 1932 film version of Ernest Hemmingway's A FAREWELL TO ARMS will never challenge the likes of ALL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT--but while it fails to capture the horrors of World War I it is remarkably effective at capturing the novel's sparse and unyielding prose. A good deal of the credit goes to writers Garrett and Glaizer and director Borzage--but the real interest here is not so much in the cinematic interpretation of the Hemmingway novel as it is in the cast, which is remarkable.

Actress Helen Hayes was already among the leading lights of the New York stage when she was lured to Hollywood for a handful of films in the early 1930s--and it is easy to see what all the fuss was about. Plaintive beauty aside, unlike most stage and screen actors of the era she is completely unaffected in her performance and proves more than powerful enough to overcome the more melodramatic moments of the script. She is costarred with Gary Cooper in one of his earliest leading roles, and while the pairing is unexpected, it is also unexpectedly good: they have tremendous screen chemistry, and in spite of the film's dated approach they easily draw you into this story of an ill-fated wartime romance between a nurse and an ambulance driver.

The film is also well supplied with a solid supporting cast that includes Adolphe Menjou, Jack La Rue, and Mary Philips, and while clearly filmed on a slim budget--something most obvious in the battlefront sequences--the camera work is remarkably good. Unfortunately, all this counts for nothing unless you can find a print of the film that you can stand to watch. It is sad but true: the 1932 A FAREWELL TO ARMS seems to have fallen into public domain, and the result is a host of DVD and VHS releases that range from the merely adequate to the incredibly dire.

Gary F. Taylor, aka GFT, Amazon Reviewer

Ernie Goes To Hollywood

[slokes · 7/10 · 22 September 2008]

Frank Borzage's 1932 version of "A Farewell To Arms" has the distinction of being the first film adaptation of an Ernest Hemingway novel. It's more Hollywood than Hemingway: Long blankets of dialogue are condensed, sharp edges softened, and the romance between Lt. Henry and Catherine made into something more befitting Douglas Sirk than the unsentimental Papa. Yet a surprising amount of the novel's spirit does survive the transition.

In a story not much different than what you might have read in high school, Lt. Henry (Gary Cooper) is an American ambulance corpsman serving with the Italian Army as it fights the Austrians along the Piave, a bloody backwater campaign of World War I. Henry meets nurse Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes) and they quickly fall in love. But the violence of war, and the interference of friends like Capt. Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou), threaten to tear them apart.

The differences between book and movie are more in the matter of treatment than storyline. When Catherine and Lt. Henry first meet, they talk about her former lover, a war casualty. In the film, she says "If I had to do it all over again, I'd marry him". In the book, though, Catherine wasn't regretting sending him off to war unmarried, but without their having had sex.

Yet a minute later, her lines come directly from the book, Catherine noting her daydreams about her old lover turning up at her hospital with a saber cut, then adding: "He didn't have a saber cut, they blew him to bits." For Hollywood, violence was always easier material than sex.

Since this is a film made before the inhibiting Hays Code (Will, not Helen), Borzage and his writers are able to get away with a bit more than they would have just a couple of years later. Catherine and Henry still make love, and she gets pregnant.

There IS a lot of Hemingway here. Catherine is a still somewhat mixed-up woman who hates the rain "because I see myself dead in it". The folly of war is openly expressed. "If nobody would attack, the war would be over," one soldier muses. Lt. Henry is wounded, and embarrassed because it happened while he was eating cheese. Even some small exchanges survive, like one between Lt. Henry and a nasty nurse.

She: "Pity is wasted on you."

He: "Thank you."

But the film also strikes out for its own territory, successfully in the case of building up the role of Capt. Rinaldi. Menjou, who had been a real ambulance corps captain in World War I, creates a marvelously ambiguous figure, a cheerful cynic who befriends Henry and is put out by the romance with Catherine. "Why don't you be like me?" Rinaldi asks his "war brother". "All fire and smoke. Nothing inside."

Rinaldi's role here is a change from the original story, a gamble by Borzage and writers Benjamin Glazer and Oliver H. P. Garrett that pays off, devising some needed tension to the central storyline and underscoring the core message of the rottenness of war. If it wasn't for war, Rinaldi might value something more than his next bottle or bedpartner, and Menjou, in a final triumphant moment, lets you know it.

Pacifism, in movies as in life, only takes one so far. The film makes a mistake near the end by more consciously making a stand as an anti-war film, with much hysteria, bells ringing, even Cooper chanting "Peace...peace". It made those points much better as sidenotes, like an opening tracking shot where a seemingly sleeping soldier is revealed to be dead, or later on when Cooper trudges through a muddy path and notices the corpse everyone's been walking on. By contrast, too much of the movie's finale is played for the cheaper seats, and doesn't stand up today.

But the film does stand up better than many later Hemingway adaptations, with its strong cast, inspired tracking shots, and a mostly successful effort by Borzage to translate Hemingway's terse prose style into film. What you get is a short but deep examination of life during wartime.

A good war/romance movie

[perfectbond · 7/10 · 4 January 2003]

A Farewell to Arms features the expected good performances from Gary Cooper, Helen Hayes, and Adolphe Menjou. For its time, it also features impressive sets. The dialogue also does justice to its source material, the Hemingway novel of the same name. This movie must've been appreciated much more at the time of its release, given the imminence of war sentiment and Hitler's rising power in Germany. All in all, a very good, though not great film, 7/10.

A TRUE movie Classic

[grahamsj3 · 7/10 · 19 March 2003]

This is one of those films that everybody (well, OK, MOST everybody) should appreciate. It can be either a romance or a war movie, whichever you want it to be. There are elements of both in approxiamately equal amounts, so both the war buff and the romance buff should be appeased. The acting is superb, by Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes. The story is set in WW I and this was filmed in 1932, so some of the dialog will seem a bit "dated", but make no mistake, this is film making at its best!

Hasn't aged well

[grantss · 6/10 · 17 November 2014]

Based on the Ernest Hemingway novel and starring Gary Cooper, this has the potential to be a classic. The setting and sentiment are reasonably original, especially for their time, and the movie is reasonably gritty.

Yet, it doesn't feel like a classic. The romance seems trite and contrived. Overly schmaltzy and sometimes just plain dull.

The acting is patchy. Gary Cooper is okay, but Helen Hayes' performance is quite flat. Most entertaining performance comes from Adolphe Menjou as Rinaldi.

It was probably quite good in its time, and might well be regarded as one of the first anti-war movies, but it now feels quite dated.

All's Fair in Love and War

[lugonian · 9/10 · 4 June 2004]

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 are kept apart by Major Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou), Frederic's Italian friend, who not only loves Catherine, but doesn't want him to "lose his head over a woman."

In the supporting cast are Mary Phillips (Helen Ferguson, a nurse and Catherine closest friend who objects to her continued romance with the young American); Jack LaRue (the soft-spoken Italian priest); and Blanche Frederici (the stern head nurse). Adolphe Menjou offers fine characterization of an Italian, convincing, right down to his spoken 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, but none for its acting. Director Borzage brings out the tenderness and simplicity of the young couple in love as he had done many times during his career, especially those starring Janet Gaynor and Charles Farrell over at Fox Studios. In fact, had Hemingway sold his novel to Fox, A FAREWELL TO ARMS would definitely have been awarded to the popular Gaynor and Farrell team 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. Because of the sensitivity and care as enacted by the central characters, it goes without saying that Hayes and Cooper appear to be far better suited than Gaynor and Farrell had they been offered this assignment. At first glance, Cooper gives the impression of being an odd choice for playing Fredric Henry, considering solid actors as Fredric March or Clark Gable (on loan from MGM) might have made a go of this. For the finished product, the film conveys Cooper to be properly cast after all, ranking this as one of his most finer performances of his career.

The pace to the story is occasionally slow, with the early portions lacking in underscoring, but does get better during its second half. Other than the character study and battle scenes, the movie offers some fine bonuses in ways of effective camera technique, including the hospital scene 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 directly looking down and talking into the camera range as Frederic answers the questions. This is concluded with an extreme close up of Catherine's face with only her right eye in 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 in the "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 incite look to the early film career of famous stage actress Helen Hayes (1900-1993) at her peak. 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. (****)

Classy movie based on a self-biographic novel by Ernest Hemingway with a great cast and well paced by Frank Borzage

[ma-cortes · 7/10 · 5 May 2020]

This story about a doomed love affair during the Italian campaign of WWI results to be the original and the best film version of Ernest Hemingway's novel. It deals with an American soldier, Gary Cooper, and a good English nurse, Helen Hayes, both of whom fall in love on the Italian front during WWI. He is an ambulance driver while braverly risking his life in the line of duty he is wounded and ends up in the hospital where he falls for the attending nurse who is caring him. In the midst of war the intimate pair of lovers fight to stay together and to survive the massacres around them. At the end Austria capitules and armistice is declared. Let's love tonight she said, there may be no tomorrow. Every woman who has loved will understand.

Sensitive and romantic story about a deep and thunderous love story set in the horrors of the WWI when were developing the bloody battles of Marne and Piave. However, the novelist Hemingway disavowed the ambiguous final, but the public all around the world loved the movie. Both protagonists, Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes give awesome acting in one of the great love stories of all time. They are finely accompanied by a nice support cast at the time, such as : Adolphe Menjou, Jack La Rue, Mary Philips, Mary Forbes, among others.

The motion picture shot in Paramount studios was well directed by Frank Borzage and it won Oscars 1933 to Cinematography : Charles Lang Jr and Sound. Filmmaker Frank Borzage was a notorious actor and director who made a lot of decent films from Silent cinema to Sound one , such as : Street angel, Flight command, Big city , Bad fire, The mortal storm, Billy the Kid, The big fisherman, being his greatest hit : The 7th Heaven. Rating 7/10 . Better than average. Well worth watching. The picture will appeal to Gary Cooper fans.

Other version about this famous story are as follows : A farewell to arms 1957 by Charles Vidor and John Huston with Rock Hudson, Jennifer Jones, Vittorio de Sica, Oscar Homolka. A farewell to arms 1966 by Tucker with Vanessa Redgrave and George Hamilton. In love and war 1996 by Richard Attenborough with Chris O'Donnell, Sandra Bullock , Mackenzie Astin.

Expectedly dated

[shoobe01-1 · 5/10 · 15 February 2022]

There are lots of great pre-code films that really hold up, this is not one.

Technically, it's pretty cheap. Very obvious matte paintings and process shots, and these are important because there's plenty of war stuff, driving trucks through the mountains and so on. Long scenes that give you plenty of time to notice the brushstrokes.

Photographed very boringly, and without even clever shallow DOF solutions to make the backgrounds look far away. Also, the romantic scenes are literally filmed soft focus.

And way, way, way too much of this is the romantic scenes. Really crippled the story to focus on that, with the war as a sort of backdrop.

And even then, Gary Cooper is not yet a very good actor (or not well directed?) and his character is a heel, at best.

A romance in World War One Italy

[Tweekums · 8/10 · 29 May 2019]

This film tells the story of Lt Frederic Henry, an American who has enlisted as an ambulance driver in the Italian Army during the First World War. One day he and his friend Major Rinaldi date a pair of English Nurses; Fredric and Nurse Catherine Barkley get on well and quickly fall in love. He is soon returned to the action but following an injury he is hospitalised in the Milan hospital where Catherine works. Here their love deepens. When he returns to the front again they write to each other but Rinaldi ensures their letters don't get through leading to Fredric making some drastic and dangerous choices.

While this film is set in the war, and features some impressive battle scenes it is at its heart a love story. This plays out well and there is a good chemistry between Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes as Fredric and Catherine. Adolphe Menjou is solid as Rinaldi; a slightly ambiguous character who serves to bring the two protagonists together and later keep them apart. While the battle scenes may not be brutal and large scale as those in more modern films they are intense thanks to the way it focuses on Fredric and those around him. The camera work is very inventive; a highlight being the way we see Catherine from Frederic's point of view as she enters his hospital room and kisses him. Overall I'd definitely recommend this to fans of classic cinema.

Admirable Hemingway Adaptation

[jem132 · 7/10 · 5 February 2007]

This film is certainly not a great of the cinema, yet it is a fine, rewarding Hemingway adaptation that will stay in the mind for some time.

For me, Cooper seemed to suggest Hemingway's protagonists better than any other actor. He was still on his way to stardom when cast in this film, and is an interesting choice to play Frederic, yet not a bad choice at all. Cooper's quiet, contained style of acting equips the film well and his delivery of ironic lines such as('I was shot while eating spaghetti') is subtle and measured. He interacts well with Helen Hayes as Catherine Barkley, a nurse whom ambulance driver Cooper enjoys a passionate romance with in the midst of World War One. Menjou creates a memorable Rinaldi.

This is a neatly directed and surprisingly tidy film, one that holds up remarkably well for modern audiences. It contains some very memorable images, not least the stunning shot of hundreds of sad, white crosses across the battleground landscape.

It is interesting to note this was made Pre-Code, so Cooper and Hayes do get some romantic scenes that probably would not have made it past the censors in just a couple of years time (one of their kisses is surprisingly erotic in nature). Also notable is that touching final scene between Cooper and Hayes, with Catherine in Frederic's arms- it would be used again, more famously, in Wuthering Heights (1939), with another dying 'Cathy' being carried to the window by her love.

A definitive 'Farewell to Arms' has not yet been made, however this comes the closest when compared to the overblown Selznick adaptation starring Jennifer Jones and Rock Hudson.

This just doesn't age well

[planktonrules · 5/10 · 27 October 2006]

Back in the early 1930s, this film probably played a lot better than it does now. Over 70 years later, the film just seems to creak with old age--with a very, very, very melodramatic and unconvincing plot. This sort of over-done "schmaltziness" was much more accepted in its day, but now it just seemed pretty hard to take. And this is a shame, really, as there are STILL some excellent elements in the film. Underneath it all, there is the germ of an interesting romance. Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes play a young couple united by the war who fall in love. As a "pre-Code" production, the plot was much more adult than you might have seen just a few years later, as Hayes' character becomes pregnant with Cooper's baby! He is shipped back to his unit and they lose contact with each other. As a result, both suffer immensely--though having Cooper eventually become a war deserter did make it hard to really care about him. Yes, it was a stupid war (WWI cost millions of lives for pretty much nothing), but Cooper just seemed like a guy with a lack of character--especially since, as an ambulance driver, his deserting may have cost lives. So, on one hand, I felt for the young couple, and on the other, I felt they were just,....stupid and selfish.

Apart from these problems, the film also suffers from SEVERE sound issues. I tried two different videotape versions and finally a DVD and ALL of them had horrible sound--so bad, that I almost gave up trying to watch it.

Short and bittersweet examination of love in war.

[Poseidon-3 · 30 June 2006]

Despite the fact that the source novel's author, Ernest Hemingway, was repulsed by this film adaptation of his famous work (primarily due to its focusing on the more romantic aspects of the story rather than the effect of war on man), the film pleased many cinema-goers then and now. Cooper plays an American ambulance driver during WWI (before America's involvement) whose buddy, and superior officer Menjou, introduces him to a petite British nurse (Hayes.) Though Menjou has his eye on Hayes for himself, Cooper steps in and claims her for his own. The couple forms a deeply felt relationship, though Menjou remains resentful about it. Later, the couple strives to be together, or at least to keep in touch, but circumstances and people keep them from maintaining contact. Soon, Cooper must decide whether to desert the armed forces in order to get to Hayes or to let her slip through his fingers. Meanwhile, feeling abandoned, Hayes start to degenerate physically and emotionally. It's great to see Cooper looking young and handsome. Though he is occasionally a bit awkward and gangly, he shares a great chemistry with Hayes and turns in a memorably tender scene near the finale. Hayes is appealing, reasonably unaffected (quite unaffected by the standards of the day!) and intensely romantic. An actress who had little good to say about any of her film work (despite two Oscars on her mantle), she did have fond memories of making this movie, especially where director Borzage was concerned. She and Cooper seem like an unusual pairing at first, but wind up as a very memorable couple. Menjou lends solid support, though it is surprising to hear him continuously refer to Cooper as "Baby" and see him pawing all over the young Adonis. One half wonders if he's more interested in Coop than in Hayes! The film offers up some very striking imagery at times and a fair share of inventiveness. One notable scene has the camera taking Cooper's point of view as he's wheeled into a hospital following an injury. One of the final shots has a bed sheet that somehow forms perfect pleats as it's removed from the bed, forming a memorable image. Reworked into the rather routine "Force of Arms" and then officially remade by David O' Selznick in 1957 (in an expensive, attractive, but overlong and miscast box-office failure), this remains the definitive big-screen adaptation of the book.

Not Quite Up to Snuff; A Disappointing Hemingway Film

[Hitchcoc · 6/10 · 17 February 2017]

Gary Cooper is an ambulance driver who is in the middle of combat in World War II. Life is tenuous for everyone. He meets a nurse, played by Helen Hayes, who has just lost her fiancé to the war. They hook up and he leaves. The result of their encounter is her pregnancy. Because Cooper is friends with a carouser with whom he inhabits bars and brothels, his friend, feeling that Cooper could be harmed by this woman's situation, intercepts letters she has sent to him. So she feels he has no feelings for her. He sends letters to her, but she has been transferred to another unit hospital. So communications have broken down and this leads to great pain. The ending is quite emotional (perhaps a bit too emotional) with some real overacting from two really good actors. Hemingway, apparently, hated the movie version of his book. It's worth a look but there are better movies featuring his work.

Purple Hayes

[ferbs54 · 7/10 · 27 June 2012]

Perhaps I should state at the outset that I have not read Ernest Hemingway's third novel, the 1929 classic "A Farewell to Arms," and thus can only comment on the 1932 filmization that I recently watched on DVD. Hemingway, as the story goes, actively disliked the picture, and with its relatively brief running time of 78 minutes, it's easy to imagine that a good part of the author's original was given the Hollywood glossover. (The 1957 remake, generally regarded as the inferior of the two, is yet almost twice as long!) A somewhat dated, slightly creaky affair, the film is of interest today mainly for the excellent performances turned in by its three leads and for the Oscar-winning photography of Charles Lang (his only Academy Award, despite a more-than-impressive filmography).

In the picture, we meet an American ambulance driver named Frederic Henry (played by Gary Cooper), who is serving on the Italian front during WW1. A doctor friend of his, an Italian named Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou), introduces him to a British nurse, Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes, riding high after her recent Oscar win for 1931's little-seen "The Sin of Madelon Claudet," and who largely forsook Hollywood after 1935, to become "The First Lady of the American Theater"). The two instantly fall in lust (American nurse Agnes von Kurowsky, Hemingway's inspiration for the Hayes character, who he'd met while injured in Italy, had rebuffed the author's amorous advances), and after Henry is wounded at the front, Catherine tends to his wounds in hospital, becoming, uh, knocked up in the process. Forced to leave her nursing group as a result, Catherine hides out in Switzerland to have her baby, alone, leading to the mother of all tear-jerking conclusions....

Released in December '32, shortly before the stifling Production Code came into being, "A Farewell to Arms" is, surprisingly, sexually frank. Catherine and Henry, scant minutes after being introduced in a hotel garden, are busily engaged in the ol' "horizontal tarantella," their randiness attributed to "the war" more than their own natural inclinations. Still, Henry tells his newfound galpal "I love you" immediately afterwards, and, as events subsequently demonstrate, he means it. Cooper and Hayes do have a certain chemistry here, although they make an odd-looking couple, with Cooper towering over his girl by a good head and a half. Much of the dialogue that they utter is of the florid, purple-prose variety, and Hayes seems to occasionally overact a tad. Also (and please don't think me a superficial pigdog here), lookswise, Hayes was far from the comeliest actress on the lot, although Rinaldi refers to Catherine as the prettiest nurse in the area. Given her plain-Jane decent looks, this instant lustful infatuation on Henry's part becomes a bit incredible; a sweeter-faced actress of the period, say Claudette Colbert, might have been a better casting choice. Cooper, with his shy smile and diffident delivery, is always ingratiating, however, and Adolphe manages to convince as an Italian doctor. (Like many folks, I have a feeling, I've long thought that Menjou was French, whereas he was actually born in Pittsburgh, U.S.A.!) Director Frank Borzage, who would go on to work with Cooper in the 1936 Marlene Dietrich vehicle "Desire," does a thoroughly admirable job here, while Charles Lang certainly did earn his Oscar, especially by dint of two powerful scenes: the POV shots from Henry's moving hospital gurney, and the montage sequence of Henry's trek to find Catherine in Brissago, Switzerland. In all, a perfectly respectable film, and one that I might have appreciated a little more, had I not seen the WW1 classics "Grand Illusion" (1937) and "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930)--two infinitely superior pictures--at NYC's Film Forum just a few weeks earlier. Still, those immortal classics are more antiwar films, whereas "A Farewell to Arms" is a romantic drama with a WW1 backdrop. The film concludes most ambiguously, with Henry proclaiming "Peace, peace" as doves fly high and the Great War ends. But whether he is praying for world peace, or peace and surcease from his tragic memories, or peace for the pitiful woman in his arms, is anybody's guess....

Deeply felt, and if it seems overwrought, so what?

[secondtake · 7/10 · 22 September 2010]

A Farewell to Arms (1932)

An unabashed over the top war romance (by Hemingway) and two young actors at the peak of their abilities. Add some really vigorous filming (some of the actions scenes in the battle are frightening and awesome), and you can see why this is such a powerful movie.

There is a little sense of familiarity to this kind of story, and an old fashioned romantic flavor to it (the book is similar in outline but slightly cooler, more prosaic, more intense, more true). I think Helen Hayes is perfect but only from the director's point of view--she gave him what he wanted for this kind of high drama, and I love the performance. Gary Cooper never sits right for me--his facial twitches remain twitches, his woodenness you can knock on with your knuckles--but this is one of his best performances, alongside "High Noon."

The photography by Charles Lang is really one of the highlights, and in weird way there are so many wordless part of the film, it has the strength of a great silent film with sound effects. Which pushes the burden further on the visuals. Another of the great early 1930s testaments to pure filming.

Does it work in the end? Partly. But it's really sentimental, and you have to like uncomplicated emotional conflict, and resolution, complete resolution.

excellent details but insufficient drama

[darryn.mcatee · 6/10 · 3 April 2000]

Interest sustained throughout by art direction, Lang's photography, the battle sequence editing, and Helen Hayes' performance. Cooper is satisfactory but overall the main fault is lack of narrative drive, the story principally devoted to the romance between the two leads. The anti-war theme is present but hardly developed in any intelligent fashion, apart from Menjou's comments on capturing successive mountain ranges. Far better treatment of anti-war themes can be found in All Quiet on the Western Front.

Simply sublime.

[David-240 · 10/10 · 20 June 1999]

This is a magnificent picture, photographed sublimely by Charles Lang (who deservedly won an Oscar). Cooper and Hayes are brilliant as the World War One lovers - and the ending will bring you to tears. How wonderful to see Coop so vulnerable and so in love, and Hayes just shines from the screen like a diamond.

This film is very under-rated. The camerawork is ground-breaking and original - look for the shot when Hayes kisses Cooper as he is wheeled into his hospital room. Amazing. I really love this film.

It was hard for me to care about the characters

[richard-1787 · 6/10 · 1 April 2022]

It was hard for me to care about the characters here. Frederick gets a nurse pregnant in World War I, though he knows full well that it will ruin her career. He then deserts the army to see her - though, true, he is an American citizen working as a volunteer ambulance driver in the Italian Army, so it's not quite standard desertion. He was simply selfish, so even if he did love Catherine, it was hard for me to care about his loss.

Frank Borzage made a lot of important movies at the beginning of the sound era, so it's not surprising that there are interesting touches here. Borzage clearly gives it an anti-war perspective.

But the last scene, Catherine and Frederick's last scene together played over the LoveDeath from Wagner's Tristan and Isolde, was just too overwrought for my tastes - or too underplayed to live up to the music, I'm not sure which.

If you can just watch this for another love story, it might be interesting. It just didn't work for me.

A Farewell to Arms (1932)

[fntstcplnt · 4/10 · 7 May 2020]

Directed by Frank Borzage. Starring Gary Cooper, Helen Hayes, Adolphe Menjou, Mary Philips, Blanche Friderici, Jack La Rue.

If you want to see Gary Cooper in an Ernest Hemingway story, stick with "For Whom the Bell Tolls"; this first attempt to adapt a Hemingway novel into a feature film is badly dated, even to the point of embarrassment (unless "no" didn't actually mean "no" in the 1930s). Cooper's WWI soldier and Hayes' Red Cross nurse share a rampant, ill-fated romance, though the chemistry they share is as limited as their height difference is distracting. The ending (and scenes leading up to it), a mix of limp acting and overwrought melodrama, is a slog to sit through; originally released with an alternate "happy ending" that theaters could choose between for the screenings! Redeemed somewhat by Charles Lang's assured, Oscar-winning photography and Menjou's zesty performance as Cooper's Italian friend. Remade multiple times, including once as a miniseries; Hemingway's experiences that inspired his semi-autobiographical novel were dramatized in the 1996 film "In Love and War." Also won an Academy Award for Sound.

38/100

The Great War and the devotion of two people

[Petey-10 · 9/10 · 3 May 2007]

There's World War I going and Lieutenant Frederick Henry is fighting for his life.The war becomes secondary when he meets and falls in love with nurse Catherine Barkley.Having big emotions for another person during the war is dangerous since there's the chance of losing that person.They're both afraid.He may not admit that, but they're both afraid.Frank Borzage's A Farewell to Arms (1932) is based on Ernest Hemingway's novel.It won two Academy Awards from best cinematography (Charles Lang) and best sound, recording (Franklin Hansen).It would have deserved awards for acting, as well.The charismatic Gary Cooper and the admirable Helen Hayes do a fantastic job as the leading couple.Then there's also the great Adolphe Menjou as Major Rinaldi.The dialogue is brilliant.Lots of lovely words are spoken about love.I know there are many people who would say a movie from 75 years back is too old for them.I'd say that's their lost.A Farewell to Arms offers great feelings from the first meeting till the tragic ending.

Simply sublime? Simply Soap

[trimmerb1234 · 6/10 · 19 May 2015]

A very curious coincidence. Watching, in luminous black and white cinematography, Adolphe Menjou in army uniform walk around the rooms of some fairly palatial château requisitioned by the military in WW1, instantly recalled an all but identical scene shot some 25 years later (same actor, same war, same costume, b&w photography, setting, character, adjacent country). It seemed far too close to be just a coincidence - did director Stanley Kubrick make a deliberate connection in his 1957 film "Paths of Glory"?

But what an extraordinary difference in tone however between the two films? A Farewell to Arms is surely exclusively a traditional woman's picture, classy soap in fact. Shirtless young star Cooper - eye-candy personified - has an untroubled war, fussed over by a minor army of female nurses, and, presumably pre-Hays code, quite explicitly takes the virginity of a young nurse he has not long met; and, central drama in the film, nature takes its course. Tragedy when it comes is played out in comfort, the best medical attention, where the loved ones are together and able to say their full good byes in dignity and privacy.

In contrast the grittiness of WW1 drama "Paths of Glory", the blistering attack on officer ambition at the cost of the common soldier, the cynicism - unsurprisingly too strong to be shown where it was set: France - had few equals in its tone of moral indignation. Its central character, played by Kirk Douglas, held to the flames of forced moral choice. IMDb gives it thoroughly deserved 8.5, this film just 6.6. Hovering in judgement too over A Farewell to Arms is the authentic story of front-line WW1 nurses "Testament of Youth" where duty and sacrifice was the iron rule, not fluffiness.

So how did this silly soap-fest come to be made just 15 years after the events depicted? Europe was scarred by WW1, France by its immense loss of fighting men and suffering of civilians caught in the fighting. Hollywood in 1932, it seems, just sought bums on seats. History was safely in its graves and could be left to turn as it wished. Was Paths of Glory Kubrick atoning for Farewell to Arms? I strongly suspect it was.

"what does this war mean to me? What does anything mean to me? I must find her"

Highly over rated soap opera

[swissonbrownrye · 2/10 · 22 November 2014]

It's time to explode a few myths here. Like the so-called ideal marriage between the Kennedy's that was propped up by the media for years and was finally shown to have been wrought with serial infidelities by both parties, so in the world of movie land we have some sacred cows that have to be taken out to the slaughterhouse and be ground up into decent hamburger. A Farewell to Arms is one such sacred cow. Gary Cooper struts through the movie like a tall, lanky, slow-talking, goofy string bean with an amoral attitude towards women, the army and life in general. He chooses to desert his comrades - so much for Semper Fidelis - to run back to a woman he impregnated in a night of passion. Helen Hayes is the love interest, whose acting resembled nothing so much as a cut-out paper doll in a puppet show; her cardboard expression and lifeless lines were so two dimensional it was painful to watch - Olive Oil in the Popeye cartoons had more sex appeal. There was no chemistry between her and Cooper, how could there be, he was over six feet tall and she was so short he had to hold her up in order not to stoop to kiss her in one scene. IMDb can cut this next comment out if it is not permissible to talk about other review sites, but those fawning idiots over at Rotten Tomatoes gave this movie a 90% rating in true Rotten Tomatoes lock step fashion, while giving a truly great movie, The Mission, with standout performances by Robert Di Nero, Jeremy Irons, Liam Neeson and Aidan Quinn, and that won an Academy Award for Best Cinematography and whose musical score by Italian composer Ennio Morricone, ranked 1st on the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC) Classic 100 Music in the Movies, well Rotten Tomatoes only gave THAT movie a 65% rating. That's why I take Rotten Tomatoes with a pound of salt and always go to IMDb to see if any movie is any good.

Gary Cooper...what a dish!!!

[alicecbr · 22 July 2001]

Watch for some James Dean look-alike glances in this black and white movie. It also plays a lot like "The English Patient", but not as boring. The continual bombings and chaos of the fighting was very realistic, but it didn't move the plot along as well as it might have.

Helen Hayes as the love interest does a delightful job, but it's hard not to judge this picture by the technical improvements of today's cinematographers. I too have either outgrown Hemingway, or a lot of his dialogue was cut. I suggest you go back and give the book a read, and decide for yourself. I have promised to return and see the movie again, afterwards. Gary Cooper was a really great-looking, and good acting guy.....and I've never appreciated him before so much. He had a lot of stage business that made him appear quite natural.

Adolph Menjou as the fun-loving captain did an admirable job, as well.