Frank Borzage (1932)
Made shortly before the enforcement of the Hays Code and the outbreak of a second world war, A Farewell to Arms is showing as part of BFI’s World War I (‘The War That Changed Everything’) season but it would have fit no less well into last month’s ‘Hollywood Before the Censor’ programme – especially in terms of how Frank Borzage describes the early stages of the love affair between Frederic Henry, an American ambulance driver with the Italian army, and Catherine Barkley, an English nurse. The contrast between the two leads is absorbing. Gary Cooper wasn’t the greatest actor but he was a good one. There’s a tension here between his limited repertoire of facial and vocal expressions and the considerable emotional and sexual force that he brings to the role of Frederic: the result of this tension is a performance more powerful than it probably would have been with a more technically various and inventive actor in the role. (The performance would also likely have been less effective if the Gary Cooper of later years, the ‘distinguished’ screen actor, had played it.) Cooper’s Frederic, in spite of his various ordeals on the Italian front and, after he’s deserted, his hazardous journey to find Catherine again, seems not to be tempered by his experiences but, as a lover at least, to grow younger. He’s affectingly innocent in the final scenes. Helen Hayes as Catherine is technically various and inventive. There are leading lady clichés in her acting – the way she looks gallant or flutters her eyelids – but this is a remarkable example of how histrionic range and depth can take over and propel the actor who has it into something more penetrating. Cooper’s ease and extraordinary handsomeness and Hayes’ resourcefulness as an actress create a genuine chemistry between them – their exchanges are both verbally witty and sensual. These qualities also allow the stars to sustain the power of the love affair between Frederic and Catherine even in its Liebestod climax, which, in other respects, is melodramatically tragic in a less distinctive way.
There are some strong supporting turns too. Adolphe Menjou is excellent as Frederic’s friend Rinaldi, a major and a doctor in the Italian army. This character is worryingly ambiguous: Rinaldi is repeatedly amusing but it’s his actions which help to bring about an unhappy ending for the lovers. Mary Phillips is relatively one-note but nevertheless strong as Catherine’s pessimistic nursing colleague. Neither she nor Helen Hayes attempts to sound English but they’re both rather persuasive in suggesting British girls. There’s a fine sequence in which a sympathetic army priest, sensitively played by Jack La Rue, speaks the words of the marriage service in the hospital room, where Catherine sits by Frederic’s bed. I’ve read no Hemingway except The Old Man and the Sea and was surprised watching A Farewell to Arms by the centrality of the love story and the relative lack of screen time devoted to combat. It turns out that Hemingway didn’t think much of the picture although the plot synopsis of the novel on Wikipedia suggests that the love affair was dominant in the original too. Perhaps it’s the fact that the book is narrated in the first person by Frederic (and drew on the author’s own experiences as an ambulance driver during World War I) that made the difference for Hemingway. Frank Borzage describes the action from the hero’s point of view, however, in one of the most visually imaginative sequences, as the injured Frederic arrives at a hospital in Milan and the audience sees everything just as he sees it. And while warfare accounts for only a small part of the film’s eighty-nine minutes, what there is is strongly expressionistic, conveying horror and chaos rather than telling the story. (This is especially so in the sequence that follows Frederic’s desertion and leads into his journey to find Catherine in Switzerland – though how he so easily finds the hospital where she lies mortally ill is something of a mystery.) The film won Oscars for cinematography (Charles Lang) and sound (Franklin Hansen). The music is by Milan Roder until it gives way to Wagner.
2 June 2014
