(Movie Review)Like a lot of people, I had to read "A Farewell to Arms" in high school. And, like a lot of people, I didn't much care for it at the time. I had actually been looking forward to reading it, but Hemingway's short sentences and bare prose were a bit rough to digest, and it spoiled the book for me.
(However I have always been kind of proud of the assignment I did at the time re-writing a fairy tale in Hemingway's style--if I may say so myself.)
A few years ago, however, I decided to give Hemingway another chance, and read, "For Whom the Bell Tolls". And, to my surprise, enjoyed it immensely.
Shoko, based on my recommendation at the time, started reading the Japanese translation of the book, but then gave up half way through and just ended up buying the DVD. And she in turn fell in love with the movie. Not so much for the story, but because of the handsome Gary Cooper. She bought several more Gary Cooper DVDs for our apartment.
(You can get old movies on DVD dirt cheap in Japan. I suspect partly because the public domain laws are different here.)
Thus "A Farewell to Arms" (also starring Gary Cooper) entered our apartment. This movie is 10 years older than "For Whom the Bell Tolls", and it turns out Shoko ended up preferring the older Gary Cooper to the younger one. "Men age different than women," she explained to me. "Some men are better looking when they're middle aged than when they're younger."
(Assuming this is a true, I suppose it's good news for me now that I have officially entered my 30s and left my youth behind.)
Now Shoko has left the apartment, but the DVDs remain.
Strangely enough, in the 2 years since I moved into the apartment, I never felt the urge to watch this movie. Which is kind of odd, considering all the other junk I've watched during this same period. But it just never sounded appealing to me. I didn't have fond memories of the book, and besides I knew it would be an old movie with dated production values geared towards an audience with a longer attention span.
But the other day a friend was over for coffee, and we both had a couple hours to kill before our next appointment, so I said, "Why don't we put on a movie? You can choose from any of the DVDs I have here." And, he chose this. So, here I am with the review.
It's been almost 15 years since I read the book, but I must have been still young enough to have an impressionable memory, because I remember it much better than a number of books I've read since then. I don't remember every word, but I could remember the general plot quite well. As far as I can remember, the movie follows the plot of the book fairly accurately.
This is a 1932 movie, and it shows it's age in any number of ways. The version I have has an staticky audio track that pops and cackles along as you listen to it. The picture is looking a bit dull and faded (even by the standards of black and white films). The cuts are rough and jumpy.
There are, however, a few inventive camera shots. For example, when the main character is wounded and carried into the hospital on a stretcher we see the whole seen through his eyes. The camera is pointed up at the ceiling the whole time as if we were the ones on the stretcher.
If you can get over the crackling audio track, the dialogue in this movie is quite good (probably much of it was lifted from the book) and the conversations between the characters sound very real and natural.
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