A FAREWELL TO ARMS

US, 1957, 147 minutes, Colour.
Rock Hudson, Jennifer Jones, Vittorio De Sica , Alberto Sordi, Oscar Homolka, Mercedes Mc Cambridge, Kurt Kasznar.
Directed by Charles Vidor.

A Farewell to Arms is Ernest Hemingway on love and war. It was filmed in 1932 with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes. Here it receives the 1950's epic treatment which makes it probably too long and sentimental. Apart from the scenes of battle, it is not too different from Love Story. Thus it raises the perennial question of relationships and love, along with the setting of war. In fact the war scenes in the second half are very moving. These sequences along with some comic scenes in the hospital at Milan, are much more enjoyable than the love sequences.

1. Was the theme of this film love, or war, or both?

2. Was the film a well-told love story?

3. Did the film give a vivid picture of the war in the Alps, the issues, the sufferings?

4. Did you like the hero? Was Rock Hudson too blunt, too soft or too romantic, or did he come across as a person?

5. Why did Catherine fall in love with him so quickly - was it a substitute for her dead fiance ? Was it the unreal situation of war and the need to clutch at love before people moved on?

6. Did the couple really love one another? Was it true love? Why?

7. Why did Catherine refuse to marry? Was she right even though a child was coming?

8. why did they conceal their love from the authorities? Why did Catherine not want to go back to England?

9. What attitude to war did the film take in the second half? (In the first half the war seemed incidental, the optimism of Italian attack up the mountain, the occasion for the wounding.) Now there is defeat. How well were the retreat scenes done? Did you feel a horror of war?

10. What kind of man was Dr. Rinaldi? Did you like him? Why? What had happened to him at the front? Why did he not want to retreat? What comment on war did his arrest and execution make?

11. Why did the hero desert? Was he justified in the face of senseless execution? Was he justified in deciding to stay a deserter? Why?

12. Were the couple selfish in fleeing to Switzerland? Is this what they should have done? How did the peace in Switzerland give a happy contrast to the war devastation in Italy?

13. Did you find Catherine's giving birth and dying sad? Sentimental? The weeping and the sorrow?

14. Was the point of the love story against the horror and injustice of war, eventually brought out well in the film?