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Best movie of this year hands down!

Memorable, crazy movie

Good start, but then it gets ruined

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

Frederick Henry (Rock Hudson) is an American in an Italian ambulance unit in WWI. He falls for nurse Catherine Barkley (Jennifer Jones). Later he's injured at the front. He's treated by his doctor friend Major Alessandro Rinaldi. He has an affair with Catherine and she gets pregnant.The romantic acting is old fashion and lacks real heat. It's very fake. The war lacks tension. It looks like David O. Selznick had paid for a cast of thousands but it doesn't look intense. Even the epic retreat should be better. It tries to be funny without succeeding. It's too slow and too long. I couldn't wait for it to finish not long after it started. It's boring.

At first glance we don't have a winning hand with actor Rock Hudson. At second glance, however, we might be prone to reconsider many of the instances that surround that remarkable man, the tallest all time Hollywood star (1.96 cm). He had the misfortune not to receive an Oscar and die early from undiagnosed AIDS-related disease - which I personally disbelieve (where are his skin lesions?), and would retreat for a more humble malady such as stress and ill cured circulation problems. Whatever, the dully attention should be paid to that man who was consistently at the top box office in 1950s and 1960s together with Gable, Cooper, Wayne, etc; his movie "A Farewell to Arms" (1957) which I consider his best performance remained also unappreciated.The cream about all things connected with Rock Hudson is his relationship with director Douglas Sirk. American born Hudson (Winnetka, Illinois) had the strange fate to be launched into career by an émigré from Germany whom personally Goebbels had recruited for UFA studio in the 1930s. Detlef Sierck failed to become a Nazi but his son did, he was killed in WWII. Sirk fled with his Jewish wife to America and afterwards in the 1950s became an icon for underground cinema. Sirk never refrained from his German passport - maybe because of that he didn't receive Oscar in America - and in 1960s returned to Munich to teach classes at Hochschule für Fernsehen und Film. He had many students from which Rainer Werner Fassbinder (1945 – 1982) wrote a book about him. RWF was thought to have died of AIDS, by the way.To spend my matches honestly I should admit that instigation for these lines was given by couple of films that were distributed on DVD by Criterion Collection. These movies represented the duo Sirk - Hudson and there I found a half hour interview with Sirk himself taken by BBC journalist. Very useful stuff. Beside the fact that you see the director with no masks, further I got another dagger when I saw how much resemblance there was between the titular and no less than ... the great Charles Chaplin. The reader would excuse my comparison and I will talk no more except that I quickly revised my personal copy of Chaplin's "Autobiography" - a remarkable memoir and maybe the best written by someone who gave so much to film profession.Film industry is no battlefield. Despite the fact that many actors died as heroes while making divertissement for the crowd, the latter should reproach that they were millionaires. Funny thing how money both kills and gives life. Thank you!

David Selznick loved Jennifer Jones and per John Huston in his book "put everything on the line for his adored Jennifer" I met Douglas Fairbanks Jr years ago at a party when he was in New York and Fairbanks remarked that of major producers he knew, David Selznick stood out because of Mr. Selznick's love of great literature. David Selznick's brilliant productions of Gone With The Wind, Rebecca, David Copperfield, et al reflect Selznick's great love of great novels. (David Selznick wanted to but could not get financing for War and Peace starring of course Ms.Jones) One wonders why David Selznick insisted on remaking A Farewell to Arms but push ahead he did. David Selznick made a releasing deal thru 20th (Likely because of Jennifer Jones' attachment and successes at 20th Century Fox -Song of Bernadette, Love Is A Many Splendored Thing, et al) and hired John Huston to direct again possibly because of Jennifer's past history with John Huston (Beat The Devil, We Were Strangers). David Selznick micro managed his productions and fired John Huston whom he felt was titling the picture towards a war film versus a highly romantic film, i.e. favoring Rock Hudson over Jennifer Jones. Charles Vidor replaced Huston and also had clashes with David Selznick. In the mid 50's a gigantic production shot on location in Italy had to be a logistical challenge: Selznick also fired Arthur Fellows as line producer. Some of A Farewell To Arms scenes are brilliantly photographed and large in scope as is the trademark of a Selznick International picture.Jennifer Jones was a beautiful movie star. I would recommend a review of Ms. Jones career, as Ms. Jones is sadly forgotten but was a huge box office star and acclaimed screen actress of her day: Madame Bovary, Good Morning Miss Dove, Duel In The Sun, Ruby Gentry et al Some carp over Jennifer Jones' age in this film but Jennifer Jones looks fine in this picture (but ironically would look even much better years later in a fine and underrated film 20th's Tender Is The Night). My quibble with this film is the dialogue between Jennifer Jones and Rock Hudson which seems so stilted and phony. Has anyone counted the number of times the word "darling" is used?Rock Hudson, then a gigantic box office star after George Stevens great film Giant and his run at Universal with hits such as Magnificent Obsession, All That Heaven Allows, etc got first billing over the veteran Oscar Winning Jennifer Jones. Elaine Stritch is wonderfully sassy in a small but pivotal supporting role. We are likely never to see the likes of David Selznick again, a pioneer in film. Of all David Selznick's movies I liked Gone With The Wind best but also the splendid WWII Film Since You Went Away starring Ms. Jones and a superb Claudette Colbert I wish Selznick had done an original film like Since You Went Away rather than a remake of A Farewell To Arms. Mr. Hudson adored by his female co-stars such as Doris Day, Elizabeth Taylor, Kim Novak, Jane Wyman, et al never really had much to say about working with Jennifer Jones. Ms Jones until her death never commented much about anything ever about her career, her Leading Men, or about her stormy private life. A book on the back story filming of this movie would prove to be interesting. Reading Memo From David O Selznick and David Thomson's Showman would help understand David Selznick's obsession with Hemingway's A Farewell To Arms and Ms. Jones in particular. This was the final film personally produced by David O Selznick.

Terrible adaptation of Heminway's low key love story. An American soldier (Rock Hudson) falls in love with a British nurse (Jennifer Jones) in Italy during World War 1. What's wrong with this? Virtually everything. Hudson is WAY out of his depth here. He could be a good actor but not in this movie. Jones is far too old for her role (she's 21 in the book--here she's 38...and looks it!). Also her acting wavered between overdone and underdone! They took a simple low-key love story and blew it all out of proportion. The film is fatally long (a little over 150 minutes), self-indulgent and padded to a ridiculous degree. It seems producer David O. Selznick thought he was doing "Gone With the Wind" again. Some of the scenery is truly stunning (even on a small TV screen) but there's not enough of a story to match the images. SPOILER!!! The ending where Jones dies is supposed to be tragic but the bad acting and overblown theatrics had me fighting not to laugh! To make matters worse actor Vittorio De Sica overacts to a truly embarrassing degree. Overblown, self-indulgent, badly cast and slow. Pretty terrible. This was (understandably) a financial and critical bomb and ended Selznick's career as a producer. You might want to tune in for some of the scenery at the end but it's really not worth it. I give this a 3.