The famous antiwar novel by Ernest Hemingway “A Farewell to Arms” was filmed several times ("A Farewell to Arms (1932)", n.d.). Frank Borzage released a classical film adaptation in 1932, which has been awarded with two Oscars. The book was imbued with hatred for the war, to all those who unleashed it, as well as an unquenchable thirst for life. The text of the novel is incredibly sincere and true due to the fact the writer himself has passed the World War I (Hemingway as his character served as a lieutenant in the Italian Red Cross corps). Military experience has helped the author to create a vital product that is somewhat a stingy text that tells the reader about the war, its uselessness and contradiction to the human nature.
During the Great Depression, the people, experiencing grief and deprivation, wanted to receive a positive mood from the movies. So Frank Borzage made two endings of the picture. In the first one, the female character dies after a newborn baby, while in the other one, she still alive.
Of course, film version largely loses in comparison to the book, but it may well serve as a substitute for people who do not like to read books, but want to get acquainted with classical works. It retells the story in some detail, though with a noticeable reduction. For example, it has never been said that a friend of the character – Captain Rinaldi “has caught syphilis after having fun. The scriptwriters Benjamin Glazer and Oliver H.P. Garrett carefully treated a good book, displaying the essence of Hemingway’s work, adapted for the cinema version. The director Frank Borzage diligently filmed the text of good quality, creating an excellent adaptation of the acclaimed best-seller, which later will become a world classic. Scenes, which showing the horrors of the battlefield as such, are not included in the picture. Both the book and the film tell the story from the perspective of the protagonist. The picture is even an entire episode, when everything, which is happening around, the viewer sees through the eyes of the character Gary Cooper. This applies to the scene of the arrival to the hospital, where different people are inclined from time to time to a wounded man, who is lying on the bed, and he cannot stand to see, where he is.
The audience must understand the whole inhumanity and absurdity of war on the example of the relationship between the main characters – an American lieutenant and an English nurse. Therefore, there is no action in the movie. Nevertheless, several stories showed the audience artillery bombardment. The cameraman Charles Lang, who possessed rather meager capabilities while shooting, captures the same scene at a high level.
As has been said, from the point of view of the plot, the film practically retells the book without serious reductions in its content. A lonely lieutenant and a groom nurse casually met during the war everyday life (he accompanied a convoy of trucks with the wounded to the hospital, where she served). Young people liked each other, and understanding that they would never see each other again, they gave themselves to their passion. The regimental chaplain blessed them with love, and even married the characters. Lovers found brief moments of everyday life for the meetings during the war. When she found out that she was pregnant, she went to Switzerland. The character followed her, taking off his uniform and throwing his personal weapons. He virtually deserted from the army. Whenever it looked like he is going to gain his wife and son, he loses both, at the very moment, when the peace comes, and there is no reason to die. Thus, the author wanted to say that love in war has neither past nor future – but only a short-lived happy moment. So we see that the main story has not really changed, which could not fail to delight fans of Hemingway's creativity. In my opinion, the film perfectly displays the essence, the atmosphere and the spirit of the novel, which led to a real success for all who had a hand in the creation of this film.
The next movie that I chose is “To Have and Have Not”, filmed in 1944 with Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall, who played the leading roles ("To Have and Have Not (1944)", n.d.). This film adaptation does not look like an exact film adaptation of the novel as such, and I will try to explain why.
Speaking globally, from Ernest Hemingway's novel here we see only the protagonist named Harry Morgan, bar, boat, his assistant, Eddie and the first scene. Everything else is a result of not very inventive imagination of the scriptwriters. By itself, the film is quite watchable because of great actors, good shot, but calling it "To Have and Have Not" and associating with Ernest Hemingway's novel is clearly not worthy. The novel by Hemingway is a drama, in which many genres are mixed. The idea of the novel is to show which footpath a person sometimes has to go through to achieve something in life, and which results from the choice between having and not having. The novel is very cool, powerful, interesting. The film is not as good as the book. The brave captain of the ship in France gets involved in the underground and wants to help the guerrilla movement. The entire plot of the film takes a back seat because of the incredible chemistry between the main characters. How we can think about the war when there is a woman who can captivate the eyes by setting fire to a cigarette. After viewing, you do not get historical details in the memory, but fascinated Morgan’s gaze at Marie Browning, singing under the accompaniment of a small orchestra.
Caribbean Martinique after the fall of France in 1940 is an area, which is infinitely far from paradise. Local "Gestapo", the supporters of the Vichy regime, wove a web of fear and terror over the island, preventing any political movement for freedom. This is the reality of the world “To Have and Have Not”, a free-style film adaptation of the novel by Ernest Hemingway. Despite the fact that the events were moved from Cuba of the 1930s, affected by Roosevelt’s policy of "a good neighbor", the roots of the novel are seen very well. In the first frame, the director Howard Hawks with the trepidation, inherent to Hemingway, reproduced the leisure of the real men - fishing romantic in Caribbean style, where the rich tenants boats are as worthless as fishermen and contemptible in their arrogance. The main character named Harry Morgan is the captain of one of these boats. The ideal image of a courageous man with acute eye for detail view as well as the captain's cap was specially created under the head of Humphrey Bogart.
However, everything changes when the scriptwriters Jules Furthman and William Faulkner added a woman. And contrary to popular wisdom, the lady is changing not only the man but also the course of the film, turning the scenes into arbitrary interpretations. Being a fan of Hemingway’s creativity, the director Howard Hawks repeatedly pointed out that this book was the weakest work of American writer. Therefore, the core of the film version of the novel was overhauled and became sporadic and unintelligible as baubles in a fog. However, as a true representative of the “lost generation”, Hemingway knew a lot about the gloomy suspense. And such episodes as illegal crossing are absolutely reliably impregnated with fervor along with bad premonition. Unfortunately, such moments are the exception rather than the rule. And the basis for the film became the romantic history of relations, which clearly distorts the truth of the novel.
In general, if you say succinctly, the “To Have and Have Not” is a wonderful film with a misleading reference to Hemingway. Yes, because the film itself is good, but it is a free paraphrase or interpretation of the Hemingway’s novel. Yes, the spirit of the novel, in fact, has been saved, but the plot mangled beyond recognition. Moreover, the scriptwriters redrew the characters of the protagonists and most importantly changed the place of action. Thus, finding fault with the details does not make sense, since more global and fundamental constituent elements of the American writer's novel have been changed.
The third film is an anti-war drama “For Whom the Bell Tolls”, adapted in 1943 based on one of the most famous works of Hemingway ("For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)", n.d.). Both the book and film adaptation impress. “For Whom the Bell Tolls” is a good film adaptation of the novel by Hemingway. The film consecrates the events of the Civil War in Spain. American soldier, Republican internationalist Robert Jordan gets the job to support of the guerrillas in the rear of Franco’s important bridge. During the preparation of operations, Robert falls in love with María, a woman, rescued by partisans. But fate has always its plans and love is not an obtsacle. So this beautiful but tragic story begins.
Love Line is not consecrated as deep as in the novel. In the center of the story are two people who passed through many trials and have found each other in the harsh days of the war, love, which lasted three days and three nights. This story is the story of two soul mates, two people who dream of a quiet family happiness, and are building plans, which would have not come true.
Starring Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper are prominent actors, who displayed love story of their characters on the screen. They played so movingly deep, that they believe in the love and hope that everything will be fine. Gary Cooper has successfully coped with the role of Robert Jordan, courageous, purposeful, self-confident person, who will perform a difficult, high-risk task, but in spite of that, he only goes forward. Ingrid Bergman is a wonderful actress who played María. I think that she is ideally suitable for this role: beautiful, blond, clean, with sparkling blue eyes and snow-white smile. Yes, Hemingway himself said that, describing María in the novel, he imagined Ingrid Bergman, who three years later played the role in this film. It is thanks to Ernest, his thorough and detailed statement of characters that the actors were able to dive so deeply into the images, and on the screen we could see multi-faceted characters, where each of them is different. So it is just an aesthetic pleasure to see them. By the way, the roma Rafael, who had little to do with real gypsy, could not better play this role in the movie. The very image of Rafael turned even brighter than in the book.
As for the plot, it very clear was the policy of mixing sequence of the story line, sometimes even alerting it. I watched the film immediately after reading the book, and the whole story was still fresh in the memory, and therefore I was able to capture differences with the original. Kissing and the whole dialogue between the two lovers semmed a little bit naive. They had painstakingly worked on the script. Hemingway in his best years (and the publishment of the book "For Whom the Bell Tolls?" was just related to this period of his work) wrote harshly, truthfully, openly, clearly. The palette of the book could not have been conveyed by the director Sam Wood.
The main drawback of the film adaptation is the plot distortion, change in the sequence of bases and mangling of the novel. And besides, if not more than a two-hour running time of the film, the movie would have looked even more solid, substantial, rich, but still in some moments some not so required length was felt. As for all the other characteristics, it is not a bad film adaptation, which is quite pleasent to watch.
Summing it up, it is worth noting that there are more than ten American adaptations of the novels by Hemingway. I chose three film adaptations, since they are one of the most popular ones just like the novels, which they represent. Based on the above analysis, we found that the film adaptation of the cult novel is a quite difficult thing and sometimes thankless task as it is difficult to please all the Hemingwa’s fans in this case. Nevertheless, we see that Hemingway himself was directly involved in the production of data, for example, in the case of the selection of the actors in the movie «For Whom the Bell Tolls». Or we can remember the scandal with the director of the film «A Farewell to Arms» about the final, in consequence of which Frank Borzage had to shoot two endings, good and dramatic, like in the book. But in any case, all these film adaptations brought a lot of trouble both to the filmmakers, and to the writer himself. In my opinion, great success was only one film – «A Farewell to Arms». But the movie «To Have and Have Not» is in general rather indirect relation to the product, so disassembling the parts does not make sense. The film «For Whom the Bell Tolls» has gone less than «A Farewell to Arms», because the important thing was fixed – the plot. It was warped and put upside down. But there are pluses. The best in this film was the acting, as the actors perfectly coped with their roles. Although it was easier to do so in this film, because at least one of the main roles has been written for Bergman by Hemingway himself, taking into account her strengths and weaknesses.
Rеfеrеncеs
A Farewell to Arms (1932). IMDb. Retrieved 19 May 2016, from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0022879/
For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943). IMDb. Retrieved 19 May 2016, from http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0035896/
