Stubs - A Farewell to Arms (1932)

A Farewell to Arms (1932) Starring Helen Hayes, Gary Cooper, Adolphe Menjou. Director Frank Borzage. Screenplay by Benjamin Glazer, Oliver H. P. Garrett. Based on the novel A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway (New York, 1929) and the play of the same name by Laurence Stallings (New York, 22 Sep 1930). Produced by Benjamin Glazer (Associated Producer) Run time: 90 minutes. Black and White. USA Drama

As a writer, you’re often advised to write what you know, and the novel A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, may be a good example. Responding to an International Red Cross and Red Crescent Movement recruitment effort, an 18-year-old Hemingway signed to be an ambulance driver with the American Red Cross Motor Corps in Italy. Within two months of landing in Italy, Hemingway was badly wounded in mortar fire and would spend six months recovering in the Red Cross hospital in Milan, where he fell in love with a nurse, Agnes von Kurowsky, seven years his senior. The two would become engaged but she would break off the engagement after Hemingway came back to the States. That experience would be the basis for his third novel, A Farewell to Arms first serialized in Scribner's Magazine (May-Oct, 1929).

Ernest Hemingway in his ambulance uniform.

After Laurence Stallings adapted the novel into a play, directed by Rouben Mamoulian, Paramount bought the film rights for $80,000 and Mamoulian was originally set to direct. They weren’t the first, as MGM and Warner Bros. both considered making a film based on the novel but decided it would be too costly to make. Mamoulian’s connection to the film didn’t last long, as it was announced that Richard Wallace was initially scheduled to direct Gary Cooper and Eleanor Boardman in the starring roles. Boardman would be replaced by Helen Hayes, and Wallace by Frank Borzage. The film went into production the week of July 23, 1932 and had a negative cost of $799,519.89. 1500 acres of the Paramount Ranch was set aside for the production.

Before the film went into production, the Motion Picture Producers and Distributors of America (MPPDA) officials had several consultations with Harold Hurley, a Paramount executive, to discuss the major difficulties of bringing the story to the screen, in particular the handling of the Italian aspect of the war, and Catherine's childbirth scene. Memos indicate that Paramount consulted with the Italian Embassy in Washington, D.C., and with prominent banker Dr. A. H. Giannini, in order to make changes to any objectionable elements.

Even after the film was completed, the MPPDA office still had issues and found certain scenes in violation of the Production Code, in particular the seduction scene in the early part of the film, and Catherine's childbirth. Hurley elected to have the film viewed by a committee of producers, which included Joseph Schenk, Carl Laemmle, Jr., Sol Wurtzel and Emanuel Cohen, for a judgment, as Paramount was reluctant to make further changes. The committee viewed the film and concluded that "because of the greatness of [the] picture and the excellence of direction and treatment that the childbirth sequence was not in violation of [the] Code.”

The completed finally, the film premiered in New York on December 8, 1932.

Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes) eavesdropping on another nurse being punished.

The film opens with former architecture student Frederic Henry (Gary Cooper), who is now a lieutenant in the Italian army's World War I ambulance service. His ambulance brings Italian wounded soldiers to the hospital but it is for English soldiers and there is an Italian unit on the other side. As he walks through, he enters the backroom where the English nurses are watching one of their own be sent home because she’s pregnant. Keenly watching through a high window is nurse Catherine Barkley (Helen Hayes). When the nurse is dismissed, Barkley helps her pack.

Frederic Henry (Gary Cooper) rooms with Captain Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou).

After coming back from the front, Frederic spends his free time drinking and chasing women with his comrade, Captain Rinaldi (Adolphe Menjou), a surgeon. Rinaldi is anxious for Frederic to meet a nurse that he is in love with. At first, Frederic is not interested, as he instead is interested in native Italian women.

Out on the town, Frederic gets close to a prostitute.

Out on the town with Rinaldi, Frederic has been drinking and is trying to put the moves on an Italian woman, talking about the arches of her shoes. There is a bombing raid and everyone scrambles for cover. It takes Frederic a beat to realize he’s in danger and scrambles out the window. Meanwhile, Catherine, still in her nightclothes, runs from the nurse’s dormitory and runs into Frederic. Still thinking he’s talking to the woman from the bar, he insinuates she’s a hooker before realizing she’s not the same woman.

Later, Frederic goes along with Rinaldi to a party where he is introduced to Catherine. Rinaldi had arranged for Frederic to be paired with Catherine's friend, nurse Helen Ferguson (Mary Phillips), but Frederic only has eyes for Catherine and follows her when Rinaldi takes her outside to the garden. When Rinaldi goes to get her something to drink, Frederic swoops in. He invites Catherine to go for a walk after Rinaldi returns.

Frederic puts the moves on Catherine shortly after having been introduced to her.

Catherine reveals that she had been engaged to a soldier who was killed in battle. After more conversation, Frederic tries to kiss her and she slaps him. Both apologize and talk some more, before she asks him to kiss her again. In the darkness, he seduces her and tells her he loves her. It is insinuated that they have sex out there and it is Catherine’s first time.

Frederic is ordered to the front for a period of several days, but while on the road, he orders the ambulance driver to turn back so he can express his love to Catherine, then promise that he will return to her. Fearful that his friend is losing his head over a woman, Rinaldi has Catherine transferred to Milan.

But despite his promise to Catherine, Frederic is wounded in an attack while sharing dinner at the front.  Rinaldi makes a special trip to the front to operate on his "war brother," after which he relents and sends him to Milan to recuperate.

Publicity still of the scene where the Priest (Jack La Rue) "marries" Frederic and Catherine.

While he’s there, Frederic is married to Catherine unofficially by a Priest (Jack La Rue), a friend of Frederic’s from the front. Illicitly, Frederic and Catherine have a wedding night tryst in Frederic's hospital room.

Frederic and Catherine's happiness is short-lived.

Their idyllic life in Milan comes to an end when a nurse discovers liquor bottles under Frederic's mattress and, observing that his days of recuperation are over, has him sent back to the front.

Catherine confides in her friend, Helen, that she is pregnant, and goes to Brissago, Switzerland to wait for Frederic and to have the baby. Catherine and Frederic write each other but their letters are all marked Return to Sender due to Rinaldi's overzealous censorship.

Frederic confides in his friend before deserting.

Frederic, worried over her long silence, only confides his concern to his priest friend. He then deserts the Army and makes a perilous journey across Italy to find her. During his journey he gets mixed up with other soldiers who are also deserting and is captured.

When the other deserters are shot, Frederic manages to escape. Back in Milan, he breaks into Catherine’s room at the dormitory only to find Helen Ferguson is living there now. She tells him that Catherine is pregnant, but refuses to give him where she is.

Frederic takes up residency at a hotel and places an advertisement asking Catherine to meet him there. Rinaldi sees the advertisement and meets him, and tells him that the priest had told everyone he was dead. Although Rinaldi offers to write a report that Frederic was only shell-shocked and did some heroic feat, Frederic refuses to return to the war. Finally recognizing the depth of Frederic's love for Catherine, Rinaldi informs him of her whereabouts, which is just across the river. Frederic borrows the hotel owner, Harry’s (Paul Porcasi), boat and heads out despite a storm and patrols.

Meanwhile, in Brissago, an ill and heartsick Catherine collapses after having all of her unopened letters to Frederic returned.

Frederic is with Catherine when she dies.

Frederic arrives in Brissago just as Catherine is being wheeled into an emergency caesarean section. However, the child is stillborn, and Catherine is dying. Finally, Frederic is allowed to spend her final moments with her.

Meanwhile, Austria is defeated and armistice is being celebrate when she dies.

The film ends with Frederic holding up her dead body and turns slowly toward the window, sobbing, "Peace, Peace,” while the celebration around them continues.

This is the film's original ending when released to international audiences in 1932. Some prints for American audiences had a happy ending, where Catherine did not die and exhibitors were given a choice of the endings they wanted to show.

Ernest Hemingway loudly complained about the finished picture. He didn’t like that the movie shifted the focus of the WWI-set movie from the war to the romance. And he really didn’t like that Frank Borzage shot two different endings: the sad one faithful to the book, and a happy one where the heroine doesn’t die, and then the studio compounded the insult by letting exhibitors choose which version to screen.

After the film premiered in New York on December 8, 1932, the MPPDA still wanted changes made. Will H. Hays, president of the MPPDA, in a December 10 letter to Paramount's Adolph Zukor, maintained his objection to the childbirth scene, as it was in direct violation of the Production Code, greatness notwithstanding, and requested that Paramount "eliminate the footage showing phases of the actual childbirth.” Zukor informed Hays that changes to that scene had been made, including references to labor pains and gas, Catherine groaning and hemorrhaging. And even though the MPPDA gave its approval, the film was still banned rejected by censors in British Columbia and Australia, where the novel was also banned.

Reviews were somewhat mixed. Writing for The New York Times, Mordaunt Hall opens his review with “Bravely as it is produced for the most part, there is too much sentiment and not enough strength in the pictorial conception of Ernest Hemingway's novel, 'A Farewell to Arms,…'” and continues “Notwithstanding the undeniable artistry of the photography, the fine recording of voices and Frank Borzage's occasional excellent directorial ideas, one misses the author's vivid descriptions and the telling dialogue between Lieutenant Frederic Henry and the Italian officers.”

As Hall writes, “Possibly if any one has not read Mr. Hemingway's book, the picture will appeal as a rather interesting if tragic romance. In some of the scenes, however, the producers appear to take it for granted that the spectators have read the book.” He complains “The film account skips too quickly from one episode to another and the hardships and other experiences of Lieutenant Henry are passed over too abruptly, being suggested rather than told."

Despite that, the film was nominated for two Academy Awards, including Best Picture, Best Art Direction, and winning for two others, including Best Cinematography (Charles Lang), and Best Sound Recording (Franklin Hansen).

Having not read the novel, I’m not burdened by comparisons between the source material and this first adaptation. 92 years after its release, the pacing seems to be a little slow in places. I will agree with Hemingway that the focus is less on the war and more on the romance. I did not see the version with the happy ending, but I can imagine such a change would not have sat well with the author, as part of the film’s power lies in the tragic nature of the story.

Helen Hayes in A Farewell to Arms (1932).

Helen Hayes once again shows her talent as an actress. She brings a lot to the role of nurse Catherine Barkley. She shows that her win as Best Actress the previous year for her work on The Sin of Madelon Claudet was certainly no fluke.

Gary Cooper has an unenviable task of playing the hero with a character that today would be heavily criticized. As an example, it’s hard to watch the scene of Frederic and Catherine in the park and not believe he rapes her. And the way he seems to treat other women, including the other nurses, would be considered sexual harassment, even though in its day would have probably have been more acceptable. The character though is somewhat likable and I would put that down to Cooper himself. Though early in his career, he’s thought of now as playing heroes.

I didn’t really get a sense of heat between the two lovers. On the surface, they seem to be an odd couple and their relationship comes across at times as per the script.

Adolphe Menjou plays an Italian playboy surgeon and provides some comedic relief in an otherwise somber film. He sort of steals the scenes he’s in when given the chance. I don’t think this was intentional, but his performance is one of the strong points of the film.

I’m not all that familiar with Frank Borzage’s films, though I have recently watched 7th Heaven (1927) and enjoyed that film. Like A Farewell to Arms, that film is set against World War I but concentrates more on the romance than the actual war. You never really get a sense of the immenseness of the front in this film, and while there are some moments of fighting, you never really sense the horrors of the battlefield.

And while there is not an emphasis on the actual fighting, the war is always in the background and warping the world and its values. There is more to war than the actual fighting as it has an impact on people’s lives and mores. People are thrust together, make decisions, and take actions they might not if they didn’t think their days were numbered to a possible few. That is what A Farewell to Arms concentrates on even if that wasn’t the point Hemingway was after.

As Hall points out in his review, “Here and there Mr. Borzage has some sterling sequences, such as after Lieutenant Henry is wounded and is being carried on a stretcher to the ambulance and from the ambulance to the hospital.” I will agree with Hall on that sequence, as it was something I noted when viewing.

While I am glad to have seen A Farewell to Arms, I don’t know how strongly I can recommend it. There is much to appreciate about the film, including the acting by Hayes and Menjou, but I’m not sure the film ultimately delivers the punch that modern audiences, as well as Hemingway, wanted.