Movie Review: A Farewell To Arms (1957)

A grand romantic drama set against the backdrop of war, A Farewell To Arms enjoys some salient moments but also gets bogged down in arduous prolonged on-location padding.

The setting is the Great War, in northern Italy. Frederick Henry (Rock Hudson) is a well-liked American who has volunteered as an ambulance driver in the Italian Army. His close friend Major Alessandro Rinaldi (Vittorio De Sica) introduces him to the newly arrived British nurse Catherine Barkley (Jennifer Jones). Frederick and Catherine immediately hit it off, but their nascent relationship is interrupted when the Italian Army starts an offensive across the Alps and Frederick is called into action.

He sustains a knee injury which necessitates a long period of rehabilitation at an American-run hospital, and an opportunity to resume the illicit affair with Catherine and cultivate a deep love, culminating in pregnancy. They discuss getting married, but that would force Catherine back to Britain as married nurses are not allowed to serve. When Frederick is sufficiently healed, grouchy nurse Van Campen (Mercedes McCambridge) releases him back into service, forcing another separation. This time the Italian Army is routed, and Frederick experiences the worst horrors of war.

An adaptation of the Ernest Hemingway novel directed by Charles Vidor, A Farewell To Arms was producer David O. Selznick's final attempt to create an epic at the success scale of Gone With The Wind. Hollywood's second kick at the story after a 1932 effort starring Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes, this version is a sometimes plodding CinemaScope affair, inordinately self-satisfied with scenery and location shooting. Working from a Ben Hecht script, Vidor (who replaced John Huston) botches the pacing, and long stretches of the film's 152 minutes appear to be little more than an excuse for adding yet more European vistas.

On the positive side there is plenty of adventurous material on display to generate intrigue and controversy. The film takes on some difficult topics, including sex and pregnancy outside of marriage circa 1917, defeated armies turning upon themselves, and the silent tragedy of both civilians and soldiers exposed to war's brutality. Vidor does not shy away from gore, and his best sequence is a mammoth, near-silent retreat, as defeated, exhausted and emotionally spent men, women and children trudge through the mud to escape death or welcome it. And through the character of Major Rinaldi, a grizzled army veteran, the mind-bending mental strain of the conflict is also explored.

And some of the wide-screen scenery is a joy to behold. The sight of the Italian Army columns on the move along the steep switchbacks of the Alps towards the Austrian front lines is fine cinematic craftsmanship.

While these highlights are welcome and often sparkle, the central romance eventually dominates the film entirely. Long stretches of the second half are exclusively centered on Frederick and Catherine, either joyously in love or confronting the consequences of their actions. Both the war and all the secondary characters disappear, and the two lovers predictably wilt under the pressure of carrying an epic.

Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones are passable without ever setting the screen alight. Hudson operates within a fairly narrow range on either side of bland. Jones is more interesting, and allows hints of her character's fragility to sneak out through sheer insistence on being a perfect, almost subservient partner.

Ambitious but unbalanced, A Farewell To Arms has love leaving war behind, but unfortunately also losing its edge in the process.

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Movie Review: The Song Of Bernadette (1943)

A religious drama based on reported events, The Song Of Bernadette is an engaging story of belief balanced by a reasonable amount of cynicism.

It's the late 1850s in the small town of Lourdes in France. Bernadette Soubirous (Jennifer Jones) is 14 years old and lives in a dank single-room basement dwelling with her mostly unemployed father Francois (Roman Bohnen), mother Louise (Anne Revere) and siblings. The family is poor and Francois struggles to put food on the table. Frequently sick and admittedly a bit dim, Bernadette struggles to learn her catechism at the Catholic school and is humiliated by her teacher Sister Vauzous (Gladys Cooper).

One day while out collecting firewood the image of a beautiful Lady (an uncredited Linda Darnell) appears to Bernadette in a rock niche near the town's garbage dump. No one else sees the Lady, but Bernadette insists that she was there, and furthermore, that the Lady promised to reappear on many successive days. Bernadette's claims are met with skepticism by her parents as well as Mayor Lacade (Aubrey Mather), Imperial Prosecutor Vital Dutour (Vincent Price), and police chief Jacomet (Charles Dingle). Doctor Dozous (Lee J. Cobb) is brought in to examine her, while local Catholic Abbott Dominique Peyramale (Charles Bickford) adopts a hands-off, wait-and-see attitude.

The local population starts to accompany Bernadette to the site, and news spreads of the visions. When a water stream with apparent healing properties emerges near the location of the Lady's appearances, the crowds multiply and the story attracts national attention.

Directed by Henry King, The Song Of Bernadette is an adaptation of the best-selling book by Franz Werfel. The story of the Virgin Mary appearing repeatedly to a naive girl is beyond debate for devout Catholics, but probably represents nothing more than overactive hallucinations combined with a strong willingness to believe among the uneducated.

Those whose lives are made better worshipping rocks and supposed spectral images visible to only one person, augmented by magically healing water and the sweet words of a fairly dumb 14 year old, will need no convincing that all this is true. But screenwriter George Seaton deserves a lot of credit for maintaining, sometimes forcefully, a sarcastic and opportunistic alternative narrative through the words and actions of Mayor Lacade, Imperial Prosecutor Dutour and police chief Jacomet.

This trio and others refuse to believe anything other than Bernadette is either sick or manipulative, and director King gives them plenty of time and scenes to make their point. Even Sister Vauzous remains among the sceptics for long stretches, while Abbott Peyramale rides the fence and remains troubled by some aspects of Bernadette's story. Only towards the end of the film does King tilt the balance towards reverence.

The running length of 156 minutes is quite hefty, but this is a story spanning many years and rich in characters and events, and King rarely lingers in one place for too long. The sets are limited but intricate. The garbage dump, the cramped Soubirous household, a bustling town environment and the more ostentatious government offices capture the rich mosaic of a small but busy society. Alfred Newman replaced Igor Stravinsky and provides an evocative but sometimes overbearing orchestral score that plays throughout.

Helped by producer David O. Selznick, Jennifer Jones (previously known as Phyllis Isley) relaunched her career and landed the Best Actress Academy Award for her turn as Bernadette. For most of the film Jones delivers a monotonal performance, speaking in an irritatingly fake girlish tone. The final scenes, set some 20 years after the visions, offer her an opportunity to stretch and she becomes more credible. The supporting cast is deep in talent, with Charles Bickford, Vincent Price, Anne Revere, and late on, Gladys Cooper sharing the load and all leaving a positive impression.

The Song Of Bernadette is a graceful film, and handles spiritual territory with sensitivity and a nod towards alternative viewpoints. Bernadette may have been a saint chosen to inspire religious fervour, or a dimwitted girl caught in a web created by her own imagination. Either way, the story of the passion she ignited is worth watching.

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The Movies Of Jennifer Jones

All movies starring Jennifer Jones and reviewed on the Ace Black Blog are linked below:

The Song Of Bernadette (1943)

Duel In The Sun (1946)

Beat The Devil (1953)

Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

A Farewell To Arms (1957)

The Towering Inferno (1974)

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The Index of Movie Stars is here.

Movie Review: Duel In The Sun (1946)

An overwrought Western romantic drama, Duel In The Sun is a barely tolerable exercise in overheated emotions. David O. Selznick's foolish attempt to create another Gone With The Wind unfortunately crosses the line into unmitigated camp.

In Texas, the wealthy Scott Chavez (Herbert Marshall) kills his flirtatious wife (Tilly Losch) and her lover. Before being hanged for murder, Scott arranges for his half-breed free-spirited daughter Pearl (Jennifer Jones) to live with the family of his former lover and second cousin Laura Belle McCanles (Lillian Gish). The McCanles own a massive ranch, and while Laura Belle welcomes Pearl, her wheelchair bound patriarch husband Senator Jackson McCanles (Lionel Barrymore) does not conceal his condescending and racist attitudes.

The two McCanles sons immediately start to vie for Pearl's attention. Jesse (Joseph Cotten) is a calm and educated man, but also lacking in charisma. Lewt (Gregory Peck) is rough and rude, but also passionate and possessing a violent streak. Pearl tries to grab Jesse's attention, but it is Lewt who makes the aggressive move to start a steamy, possession-obsessed relationship, and Pearl can't resist his advances. With the approaching railway supported by Federal troops encroaching onto the McCanles property, a deep rift emerges between Jesse and the Senator, amplifying the tension.

While King Vidor is credited as the director, Duel In The Sun was a troubled production that suffered from Selznick's continuous meddling. In total up to seven directors may have had a hand in creating the film, including William Dieterle, Otto Brower, Selznick himself and none other than Josef von Sternberg, who was hired as a lighting expert to ensure Jennifer Jones always looked good.

And making Jones look good was one of Selznick's main motivations. They were in a relationship that would end in marriage, and Selznick was intent on sparing no expense to make Jones a huge star. He also wanted to top Gone With The Wind with another big-scale romance. Unfortunately, Duel In The Sun fails on all counts.

Despite a hideous makeup job that miserably fails to conceal her whiteness, Jones does look ravishing, and her wardrobe helps her convey an unconstrained sexuality. But Jones' overacting has to be seen to be believed, and in many scenes she descends into theatricality only suitable for the silent era or the amateur stage.

But much worse is a jackhammer script that invests 145 minutes on a romantic triangle featuring love, hate, sex, rape, racism, devotion and repulsion, often crammed into the same scene. An adaptation of a Niven Busch novel, the film does deserve recognition for daring to tackle some thorny issues head-on, including sexual power struggles and discrimination due to race. But the film fundamentally fails to provide any enriching societal or historical context around the romantic complications. The subplot related to the railway expansion appears in brief throwaway scenes and is soon forgotten. Instead the entirety of the movie drowns in the melodramatic emotions of Pearl as she wildly fluctuates between the breathless pursuit and evasion of Jesse and Lewt with no rhyme or reason.

While Lionel Barrymore and Lillian Gish show the younger cast members how its done, the stars surrounding Jones flounder just as badly as she does. Gregory Peck struggles mightily as the bad guy, the script calling on him to transform into an overtly evil man but depriving him of any depth. Joseph Cotten is so bland as Jesse that when he leaves the ranch after his dispute with the Senator, no one seems to notice.

If nothing else Duel In The Sun looks gorgeous, with plenty of sunsets, silhouettes, deep reds, blazing yellows and grand vistas to convey the harsh but wide open Texas terrain. But after a train wreck that seems to belong in another movie but here serves as an apt metaphor for the entire project, the film ends with what is probably one of Hollywood's best bad climaxes: a crawl-in-the-dust fiasco intended as dramatic but that is nothing short of hilarious in the worst possible way. For all the wrong reasons, it really is difficult to look away from the debacle that is Duel In The Sun.

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Movie Review: Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing (1955)

A Hong Kong-set post-war romantic drama, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing has a few good ideas about multi-racial relationships, but also gets bogged down in a generally unimaginative script.

In Hong Kong of 1949, Dr. Han Suyin (Jennifer Jones) is a prominent Eurasian doctor working at a busy hospital. A widow, Suyin has decided not to get involved in any further romantic relationships. But then she meets American foreign correspondent Mark Elliott (William Holden), who openly admits to being married but estranged from his Singapore-based wife. Mark is persistent in his pursuit of Suyin, and gradually she grows attached to him.

After several dates they become a couple, despite the wagging tongues of Hong Kong's social elites. Suyin questions whether a Eurasian woman can ever be accepted as the partner of an American man, and after an argument abruptly travels to China to reconnect with her family elders. Mark does not give up and proposes marriage, but complications await in the form of securing a divorce from his wife, while the eruption of the Korean War adds another obstacle to happiness.

Directed by Henry King as an adaptation of the autobiographical novel by Han Suyin, Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing is traditional romance with all the expected impediments. Suyin and Mark have different ethnicities and backgrounds, he is married, she is widowed and happy to remain unattached, and her traditional family is uncomfortable with a modern, cosmopolitan union.

The more original aspects of the film revolve around Suyin forging ahead with establishing a strong identity unencumbered by her mixed heritage, and resolutely ignoring those who wish to believe that a Eurasian woman cannot be a respected doctor or the lover of an American man. The Hong Kong backdrop, with many scenes filmed on location, and the rumblings of the communist revolution in nearby China, also add some interest.

But otherwise, the film trundles along fairly slowly, the romance taking its time to ignite and then simmering quietly. The script singularly focuses on Suyin and Mark, and they are front and centre and almost alone in every scene, creating a rather claustrophobic environment with no relief from the travails of two people. There are very few supporting characters, with Isobel Elsom as the insufferable local society gossip Adeline Palmer-Jones the most prominent.

William Holden and Jennifer Jones apparently could not stand each other while filming, but on the screen they generate sufficient chemistry to make for believable lovers. With so little else going on the two stars had to be good to make the movie tolerable, and they do make the best of their characters.

Less helpful is a suffocatingly overcooked music score that explodes into unnecessary flourishes at every opportunity, and deploys the strings of the title song seemingly every 90 seconds. Love Is A Many-Splendored Thing is passionate enough but also suffers from the creative clumsiness evident in its title.

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Movie Review: Beat The Devil (1953)

A small story of greed and lust among a group of unsavoury characters, Beat The Devil sits out in the sun for too long, but is made tolerable by the presence of enough talent in the cast to overcome a sense of drift.

Four adventurers wait at a small Italian port town for a steamer to be repaired, so that they can travel to British East Africa. Through questionable means and using inside contacts, they plan to seize control of land rich in uranium. Three of the men appear to have shady pasts and criminal backgrounds: the fat leader Peterson (Robert Morley); the nervous O'Hara (Peter Lorre) and the thuggish Major Ross (Ivor Barnard). The fourth man is Billy Dannreuther (Humphrey Bogart), and he is the group's outsider, not friendly with the others but essential to the plan since he controls the corrupt official who will enable the land transaction. Billy's wife Maria (Gina Lollobrigida) is with him, but generally bored with her husband's antics.

Also at the port waiting for the same ship are the British husband and wife team of Harry and Gwendolen Chelm (Edward Underdown and Jennifer Jones). Maria is quickly enamoured by Harry, while Gwendolen falls hard for Billy. Peterson, O'Hara, and Ross don't like Billy getting involved with a new woman, and grow wary of the Chelms. Their suspicions are fed by Gwendolen's wild and ever-changing stories about Harry's background and the purpose of their trip. Eventually all six get on the steamer for a slow journey to Africa, and nothing on the trip goes as planned.

Peterson: You mean Mrs. Chelm is an unqualified liar?
Billy: Well, let's say she uses her imagination rather than her memory.

With a script apparently written on-set and day-by-day by director John Huston and Truman Capote, Beat The Devil emits the slightly off-putting whiff of a movie thrown together at the last minute, trading on star names and hoping for the best. The generally uninteresting characters sit around waiting for something to happen, as does the film. Stuck somewhere between a second-rate travelogue, an unconvincing romance, a clumsy comedy and an awkward attempt at recreating elements of The Maltese Falcon, Beat The Devil is a curiosity despite itself.

Gwendolyn: Harry, we must beware of these men. They are desperate characters.
Harry: What makes you say that ?
Gwendolyn: Not one of them looked at my legs!

After the initial six characters are set, which requires all of 15 minutes, Beat The Devil struggles through a solid hour of icky dalliances and amateurish scheming, burning time and money as everyone waits for the boat to be fixed. The slow-moving climax moves from sea to shipwreck to shore, with a painfully unfunny (was it meant to be?) excursion into an unnamed Arab country where all the characters get to experience local heavy-handed gendarme hospitality. Huston simply does not find any magic moments to brighten the film, his directing surprisingly bland, given the cast and the potential.

Billy (to Harry): The only thing standing between you and a watery grave is your wits, and that's not my idea of adequate protection.

But all is not lost. Beat The Devil boasts an admirable number of memorable lines, zingers delivered straight, perhaps intended as social commentary or outright comedy, but either way they help to keep the film watchable through the dead patches. The best lines may have little to do with the weak plot, but at least they keep a modicum of energy pumping against the prevailing lethargy.

Billy: I've got to have money. Doctor's orders are that I must have a lot of money, otherwise I become dull, listless and have trouble with my complexion.
Gwendolyn: But you're not like that now, and you haven't any money.
Billy: It's my expectations that hold me together.

And any movie boasting Bogart, Jones, Lollobrigida and Lorre is worth a look. Bogart tries hard to call on the ghosts of glorious roles from past movies, but his caustic charm flickers rather than shines. Jones is almost too perky, her character playing for comedy and almost leaning towards a plea for institutionalization, but she is plain fun to watch. Lollobrigida is the expected sultry European and Lorre is the typical nervous man with more to hide than his face is capable of concealing. Robert Morley lends heavy weight in support, the character of Peterson trying all too hard to reincarnate the fat man from The Maltese Falcon.

Beat The Devil is neither a hidden gem nor a lost classic, but survives as an odd film that could have been much better, but settles for not too bad.

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