American Frederic Henry (Gary Cooper) is serving as an ambulance driver on the Italian front during WWI. He is taken with English nurse Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes). His best friend Italian doctor Major Rinaldi is also taken with her. Her fiancée had died at the Sommes. Frederic and Catherine begin a romance in the midst of war.Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes are doing their romantic best. This adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway classic is skewed more towards romanticism. As for the epic retreat, the movie tries to capture it but only as sound stage special effects and montages. Same goes for the crossing. The action adventure intensity isn't there. While the actors are superior, the adaptation lacks tension. This version takes the first crack at the book and hits a solid single.

I can't speak to this film's worth as an adaptation of the Hemingway novel, as I've never read it, but it's an excellent film. Borzage lost little of his talent when he moved to sound. This is a rare film from the era where the camera moves almost constantly, and there are many clever filmmaking conceits throughout (most notably the long POV sequence after Gary Cooper is first paralyzed). Cooper stars as an American fighting for Italy in WWI. He falls for nurse Helen Hayes, though they are not allowed to marry. That can't keep them apart, though, and when he goes back to fight she goes off to Switzerland - secretly pregnant. The two have vowed to write each other, but a conspiracy keeps their correspondences from reaching each other. This is pure melodrama, and by the end it turns into an unabashed weepy, but it's beautiful throughout, quite romantic and downright sexy at times. Both Cooper and Hayes are fantastic. Adolph Menjou as Cooper's best friend and Mary Philips as Hayes' do well in the major supporting roles.

Some interesting facts in a story loosely based on Hemingway's experiences, but he didn't like it. 1) Semi-autobiographical novel by Ernest Hemingway, published 1929, still in print. 2) The title is from a 16th century poem by George Peele. 3) Hemingway was an American ambulance driver for Italian army during WWI.4) Hemingway, known for being ornery cuss had little use for people in the film industry. But he did like Cooper and they became close friends for the rest of their lives.5) The studio shot two different endings so theater owners could pick which their audience would like best. Hemingway hated that but liked the $24k for the rights.6) Helen Hayes, although happily married at the time had a crush on Cooper admitting in her autobiography… 'like half the women in the world, I was, in the words of the Noel Coward song, "Mad about the boy."'7) Helen Hayes, First Lady of the American Theater, was born in year 1900 in Washington D.C. a) On stage at age 5; Broadway at 9 and by age 18, she was a star. b) In 1928 she married playwright Charles MacArthur, they moved to Hollywood and she won her first Oscar for THE SIN OF MADELON CLAUDET (1931). c) She won a Tony Award the first year they were presented, in 1947, for HAPPY BIRTHDAY. d) She won Televisions Emmy award in 1952 & 1958. e) She returned to films as the Dowager Empress in ANASTASIA (1956) and won another Oscar for her role in AIRPORT (1970). f) Her son is actor James MacArthur (of HAWAII FIVE-O fame). 9) Gary Cooper born on the Montana ranch of his wealthy father, and educated in a prestigious school in England — Cooper was a rugged frontiersman with the poise of a cultured gentleman. a) Because he failed at political cartooning he sought work as a cowboy extra in movies. b) While making THE WINNING OF BARBARA WORTH movie star Clara Bow also took an interest in Cooper seeing that he was in more of her films. c) Silent films taught him how to act. d) Cooper's first talkie success was THE VIRGINIAN (1929), in which he developed the taciturn, laconic speech patterns that became fodder for every impressionist on radio, nightclubs, and television. e) Cooper alternated between tie-and-tails parts in DESIGN FOR LIVING (1933) and he-man adventurer roles in THE LIVES OF A BENGAL LANCER (1935) for most of the 1930s. f) In 1941, he was honored with an Oscar for SERGEANT YORK, and was nominated for, PRIDE OF THE YANKEES. g) Even those co-workers who thought that Cooper wasn't exerting himself at all when filming were amazed to see how, in the final product, Cooper was actually out-acting everyone else, albeit in a subtle, unobtrusive manner. h) Some of my favorite Cooper films: MR. DEEDS GOES TO TOWN, MEET JOHN DOE, BALL OF FIRE, FOUNTAINHEAD. i) In the 1950s he made mostly westerns like HIGH NOON, Cooper retained his box-office stature. Privately, however, he was plagued by illnesses finally dying of lung cancer in 1961. 10) Adolph Menjou, who plays Cooper's drinking buddy and an Army surgeon actually served as a captain in the Ambulance Corps for 3 years during WWI. a) Made more than 100 films moving from silent film leading man to talkies and later supporting roles. b) Menjou was Oscar nominated for THE FRONT PAGE the year before tonight's film in 1931. He played the newspaper editor later played by Cary Grant in the remake HIS GIRL Friday. c) In the 1950's Menjou was a "friendly witness" before the HUAC commission. d) His last notable film was the classic anti-war picture PATHS OF GLORY (1957) playing the villainous WWI General for director Stanley Kubrick.11) Director Frank Borzage was one of the early major directors of Hollywood and like his contemporaries JOHN FORD, HOWARD HAWKS & KING VIDOR they all made the transition from silents to talkies but only Borzage won an Oscar as a director in both eras. His Academy Award for Best Director was for his earlier romantic WWI film, SEVENTH HEAVEN.Remade with Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones, A Farewell to Arms (1957) and as a TV miniseries with George Hamilton and Vanessa Redgrave, "A Farewell to Arms" (1966).In reality, she (the nurse) dumped Hemingway as he was 5 years younger (too young in her eyes) and she went back to the older Italian man!!! Hemingway was so hurt that when he wrote the novel he killed her off.

DVD rental. Though I'd only previously seen one or two Borzage films, and those long ago, I decided that he was going to be my next big discovery. Oh woe is me to find out that only this of his dozens of films is widely available on DVD, and the VHS are not easy to find unless you want to buy them all off of eBay. Anyway, I don't have a lot to say about this one, thanks largely to the very very poor sound mix on the DVD (most of the dialog between the two principals is very low, the rest rather loud, so I had to keep raising & lowering the volume which really distracted me). Also, it really wasn't that involving despite good to stellar work the cast: Gary Cooper as American Lt Henry, an ambulance driver in Italy during WWI, who falls instantly and madly in love with nurse Catharine Barkley (Helen Hayes) despite the insistent warnings from cynical friend Major Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou, the very definition of the cynic). The early parts carry a fairly light tone despite the background of the war; when the lovers are parted Cooper makes a perilous trek to Switzerland, through hell itself it seems in the film's finest apocalyptic war-to-end-wars moments, courtesy of Charles Lang's cinematography, the real star of the show. It's beautiful, well-acted, but it just didn't move me the way it was trying to. I've never really "gotten" the appeal of Hemingway, from whose novel this is adapted, so perhaps that's part of the problem.