For Whom The Bell Tolls
(1943)
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Ernest Hemingway's 1939 novel, FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, stands among the great pieces of American literature. Sam Wood's direction of the script by Dudley Nichols stars Gary Cooper as Hemingway's pain-ridden, love-torn hero, Robert Jordan, a Montana schoolteacher who risks his life to fight Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War. |
Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman turn Ernest Hemingway's classic of the Spanish Civil War into a star vehicle made for two, while director Sam Wood scrubs this tale — about an American who joins a loyalist partisan group — clean of political taint (there's no mention of Franco, for example). The focus on Cooper's love for the much-abused Bergman works well enough because of the quality of the two actors. However, it was Katina Paxinou's performance as an ancient peasant woman that won the Oscar, perhaps for the sense of reality she brought to the overall sanitisation.
Halliwell's Film Guide
Portentous, solemn adventure story based on a modern classic but without much cinematic impetus despite careful handling and useful performances. It looks expensive, though.