6.7 | / 10 |
Users | 4.5 | |
Reviewer | 4.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
A tale of the love between ambulance driver Lt. Henry and Nurse Catherine Barkley during World War I. The action takes place in Italy and the two fall in love during the war and will stop at nothing to be together. The film also analyses Lt. Henry's feelings on war and the purpose of fighting.
Starring: Helen Hayes, Gary Cooper, Adolphe Menjou, Mary Philips, Jack La RueRomance | 100% |
Drama | 54% |
War | 41% |
Video codec: MPEG-4 AVC
Video resolution: 1080p
Aspect ratio: 1.34:1
Original aspect ratio: 1.37:1
English: LPCM 2.0
None
25GB Blu-ray Disc
Single disc (1 BD)
Region A, B (C untested)
Movie | 4.0 | |
Video | 4.0 | |
Audio | 4.0 | |
Extras | 1.0 | |
Overall | 4.0 |
Ernest Hemingway’s relationship with Hollywood was begrudgingly accepting at best. He gladly took money for the rights to film his novels and short stories, but he openly disparaged most of the results as inaccurate, over-altered, or sentimentalized. He was especially hard on his first book-to-screen adaptation, director Frank Borzage’s take on A Farewell to Arms, written by Benjamin Glazer and Oliver H.P. Garrett. When the film shipped out in 1932, theater owners were given the choice of two different endings--a bleak, true-to-the-novel denouement, and a soft-peddled, more ambiguously optimistic finale. They were told to pick whichever one would suit the tastes of their local audiences, and Hemingway--as you might imagine--wasn’t pleased by this deference to the whims of bean-counting box office managers. Nor was he happy with the way the film needlessly alters events and downplays the wartime cynicism of the novel in favor of sweeping, melodramatic romance. The book, as usual, is better-- Hemingway’s authorial complaints are certainly valid--but taken as its own entity, Borzage’s A Farewell to Arms is a wonderful early talkie, with brooding cinematography and affecting performances by its two leads, Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes.
Kino's Blu-ray editions of silent classics this year have been uniformly excellent, so it's great to see the company venturing into the 1930s and the advent of talkies. As a title in in the public domain, A Farewell to Arms has received many VHS and DVD releases, and is viewable streaming online via the Internet Archive, Netflix, and Hulu, but this new 1080p/AVC-encoded transfer of the film should be considered the definitive version for some time to come. What surprised me most is how clean the print is. There are some minor flecks and specks, and you'll notice a few hairs stuck in the gate at the bottom of the frame, but there are no major scratches, tears, debris, staining, or warpage. Borzage was somewhat known for romantic, softly filtered focus, so you shouldn't expect razor-edged sharpness, but the overall clarity is several notches above the other versions of the film I've seen--and I've sampled quite a few. The tonality of cinematographer Charles Lang's image is beautifully reproduced too, with deep blacks and crisp--but never overblown--whites. The relatively short film sits comfortably on a single-layer Blu-ray disc, and I didn't notice any overt compression or encode issues. Another wonderful release from Kino.
The Blu-ray version of A Farewell to Arms features a Linear PCM 2.0 track sourced from the film's original mono mix. Obviously, the sound design is fairly primitive by today's standards, but you can see why the film won the Oscar for Best Sound Recording in 1933--the war montages feature planes roaring overhead and punchy bomb blasts. For it's time, I imagine it was quite a thrilling experience. Milan Roder's score also suits the film's varying shades of emotion excellently. As you'd expect from a film from this era, there are some light cracks and pops and hisses in the mix, but nothing distracting or unusual. What's most important is that dialogue is always easy to understand. Unfortunately, there are no subtitle options on the disc for those who might need or want them.
Unfortunately, this release is rather slim on supplements, including only trailers for Nothing Sacred, A Star is Born, and Pandora and the Flying Dutchmen, along with a sixteen-image stills gallery.
Papa wasn't pleased with it, but Frank Borzage's A Farewell to Arms is one of the most memorable Hemingway adaptations, a gripping story of love in wartime. (As an interesting historical aside, Gary Cooper and Hemingway later became close friends--in the 1940s--and often spent vacations together until they died within two months of one another in 1961.) Kino's Blu-ray edition is short on supplements, but features a beautiful picture and period-accurate sound. Recommended!
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