How sad is this?

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Fun premise, good actors, bad writing. This film seemed to have potential at the beginning but it quickly devolves into a trite action film. Ultimately it's very boring.

It's an amazing and heartbreaking story.

This movie is exactly why my darling wife watches the end of a picture before investing her valuable time and emotions into a film. No wonder it didn't win Best Picture in 1932. I guess some folks found Hemingway's typical pessimism artistic, but I didn't. I found it to be sadistic and without the redeeming quality of genuine love, albeit born of human nature and sexual desire in a time of cruel adversity. The only thing more cruel than the war are the main characters, save the priest. They are cruel and not worthy of being called, "friends." If Hemingway had friends like them, it's no wonder he committed suicide with a shotgun. If you liked the way this ended, you'll love Forrest Gump and another Hemingway classic downer, For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's a shame this story is mandatory reading in some schools and a literary study in some circles of academia.

Based on the Ernest Hemingway novel and starring Gary Cooper, this has the potential to be a classic. The setting and sentiment are reasonably original, especially for their time, and the movie is reasonably gritty.Yet, it doesn't feel like a classic. The romance seems trite and contrived. Overly schmaltzy and sometimes just plain dull. The acting is patchy. Gary Cooper is okay, but Helen Hayes' performance is quite flat. Most entertaining performance comes from Adolphe Menjou as Rinaldi. It was probably quite good in its time, and might well be regarded as one of the first anti-war movies, but it now feels quite dated.

A Farewell to Arms (1932)An unabashed over the top war romance (by Hemingway) and two young actors at the peak of their abilities. Add some really vigorous filming (some of the actions scenes in the battle are frightening and awesome), and you can see why this is such a powerful movie.There is a little sense of familiarity to this kind of story, and an old fashioned romantic flavor to it (the book is similar in outline but slightly cooler, more prosaic, more intense, more true). I think Helen Hayes is perfect but only from the director's point of view--she gave him what he wanted for this kind of high drama, and I love the performance. Gary Cooper never sits right for me--his facial twitches remain twitches, his woodenness you can knock on with your knuckles--but this is one of his best performances, alongside "High Noon." The photography by Charles Lang is really one of the highlights, and in weird way there are so many wordless part of the film, it has the strength of a great silent film with sound effects. Which pushes the burden further on the visuals. Another of the great early 1930s testaments to pure filming.Does it work in the end? Partly. But it's really sentimental, and you have to like uncomplicated emotional conflict, and resolution, complete resolution.

This film has, at the beginning several instances of behavior that many films utilize that make me wonder if the behavior was intended by the author, director, or actor. A natural plot point was exhibited when the ambulances were going uphill & someone in back pleaded for the truck to stop because a wounded soldier was 'bleeding to death'. The ambulance could not stop because it was on a grade and stopping was impossible. This would show the cruelty of war. However, when the ambulance reaches the hospital the lieutenant in charge of the ambulance flirts with nurses before arranging for off-loading patients at the hospital. Gary Cooper, as Lieutenant Henry, does his cute-character bit while wounded soldiers are dying in the ambulances.Did the author intend for the lieutenant to behave with such cruelty? The lieutenant will later desert out of love for his wife. Maybe his whole manner is of a self-involved dandy. But the author has characters mentioning the cruelty of war all the time. But if these people are cruel also, how can they complain.The character doctor Rinaldi says something along the lines that Christians should not mind being killed, presumably because they go on to their 'reward' of heaven. Did the author write this? Did the author intend the flippant way that the doctor says it? The director shoots a shot of an uncaring lieutenant immediately after the ambulance attendant complains that a soldier is bleeding to death. Was this the intention of the author, the director (or editor) making a statement of their own. Maybe this was a decision by Gary Cooper.The nurse and lieutenant may complain about the cruelty of war, but their whole affair was the result of them volunteering to be there. Then they proceed to abandon there posts repeatedly.To me any case to be made for the importance of humanity is undermined by everybody in the 'play' lacking it. The doctor friend of Henry keeps calling Henry his baby & then proceeds to destroy his life by pushing him to alcoholism. Each character seems to say 'I'm human and it is important to be human' & then proceeds to do something cruel. Presumably, the war only ended because of exhaustion and not because of intelligent human thought.I guess what confuses me is the way the characters (or actors) work very hard, which tends to make me sympathetic to them, but when their behavior is cruel a dissonance is created.