For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

 “A man fights for what he believes in”

            When I reviewed The Snows of Kilimanjaro I said I will never have a desire to read an Ernest Hemmingway story. Well let me back track and say that I am maybe now willing to read one of his stories after watching For Whom the Bell Tolls. My new open mindedness to read a Hemmingway story is most likely connected to the fact that Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper excellently played the lead characters.

            Many of Hemmingway’s stories have their plots set during the time of or taking place in the Spanish Civil War. For Whom the Bell Tolls has an American man named Robert Jordan (Cooper) who works with the International Brigade to help republican guerillas in the mountains. He is given an assignment to blow up a bridge since he is an expert in the use of explosive. Robert, or “Roberto” as the Spaniards call him, is lead to a republican hideout in the mountains where he is to wait until he feels it is the right time to blow up the bridge.

            Many of the men take to Robert right away. The one person who has greatly taken to him is a young woman named Maria (Bergman) and he feels the same toward her. They fall in love even though they know there is much danger ahead. One person who poses great danger is man named Pablo who is hostile towards Robert and nasty to the other fighters around him. Even Pablo’s wife Pilar is not happy with him at all. Pilar is a strong woman with more courage and more fight in her than all the people around her.

            Robert plans for weeks on how and when to blow up the bridge. Just a short time before the day the bridge is to be destroyed the loyalists send troops around the mountains. The guerillas begin to fight drawing attention towards them. The fighting threatens the plan of the explosion. A paper is confiscated off one of the dead republicans that Robert had drawn of the bridge and given to one of the generals. The bridge does explode and almost everyone makes it out.

            One of the central themes of the story is death. Many of the characters including Robert contemplate death. Robert knows that by taking the mission to blow up the bridge he is going to die. Every one of the characters have a very tragic encounter with death during their country’s Civil War. Maria’s parents were killed, she was taken prisoner, and her head shaven (her short hair represents the three months it has been since her hair was shaved). A character named Joaquin lost his family as well and follows an older man who is like his father. Maria and some of the other characters surround Joaquin and tell him that they are his family. Although the plot and story are grim like many of Hemmingway’s other stories it is very good and the characters are very well written

            There is nothing awful with any of the performances in the film they are all incredible. Ingrid Bergman is just total perfection as always the more I see of her the more I am convinced she never ever gave a bad performance. She was just acting perfection. Maria is supposed to be a young, tragic girl in love and Bergman just nailed it. I like Gary Cooper but I have only ever seen him in bits and pieces of films before this. Cooper was also a very excellent actor I cannot pin down what makes him a great actor he just was. Bergman and Cooper made a great couple they looked and acted so amazing together. For Whom the Bell Tolls was filmed in Technicolor and I cannot tell you how gorgeous Cooper and Bergman looked in color. Their eyes were gorgeous and the glamour lighting on Bergman just made her even more beautiful.  

            One very interesting trivia about Ingrid Bergman for this film is that she had to cut her hair really short which Hemmingway told her and she said “To get the part I’d cut my head off.” She was pretty safe because the author insisted that she get the role along with Gary Cooper. There became a problem though because Bergman had just finished filming Casablanca. Warner Bros. wanted to take out “As Time Goes By” and in order to do that they would have had to cut out the part where Bergman asks Sam to play it and she hums it. Well thank goodness her hair was cut because there would have been an issue with continuity even if she had a wig. I cannot even imagine Casablanca without “As Time Goes By” so I highly thank Hemmingway for having created his lead female character with short hair and insisting that Bergman play Maria.

            For Whom the Bell Tolls is a very good film. I was not sure if I would like it even if Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper were the leads. But once the film started and I saw how pretty it was in Technicolor and once they story got going I liked it. This is a fabulously made classic film from the direction, acting, color, and scenery. For Whom the Bell Tolls is a classic film not to be missed. 

The Snows of Kilimanjaro (1952)

“I wonder if there'll be another time as good as this.”

            I love to watch films that are based off books. Usually what happens I will watch the film first and then read the book. Also usually I can tell if the book will be good by watching the film (my case in points Rebecca, Gone with the Wind, Laura). Let me just say I will never give Ernest Hemmingway a chance because I find the films based on his books to be boring (well maybe besides The Killers which was based off one of his short stories) and such was the case with The Snows of Kilimanjaro.

            The plot of the story is Henry Street (Gregory Peck) has been severely wounded while hunting on an African safari. As he waits for help with his wife Helen (Susan Hayward) he begins to feverishly flashback to the first love of his life. Cynthia (Ava Gardner) has haunted his memory for many years. They met in Paris before the war and it was love at first site for Henry.

            Henry and Cynthia marry but he is restless after he writes and publishes his novel. He constantly wants to travel so he can gain material for his books. Henry’s constant need to travel takes a grave toll on Cynthia and their relationship and they split.

            A few years later he meets a young countess but she cannot fill the void left by Cynthia. Henry found his former wife’s address in Spain and he writes to her. When she writes back the countess who is his fiancée sees the letter and gets mad. She knows that Henry does not really love her. Henry leaves the south of France where he has been living and heads to Spain to fight in their civil war with hopes of possibly finding Cynthia.

            He does find Cynthia she is an ambulance driver. But when they see each other it is for the last time. The ambulance she was driving is hit by a bomb. Henry finds her and does not want to let her go but as he goes with the stretcher he is shot in leg for disobeying orders. His last view of the love of his life is of her desperately reaching out to him.

            Henry spends the next few years wandering around Paris. He follows women around he thinks look like his lost love. One of the women he follows is Helen. They run into each other at a different time and that is when they get together. Henry has become a drunk running around with women.

            Now in the jungle Henry realizes that he is not the failure he thinks he is with his novels and through Helen’s devotion he also realizes that he really loves her. He also now has the will to fight to stay alive until help comes.

            I thought the film was going along great at the beginning and then it hit the middle and the end and it went to pieces. I have to give a lot of praise to Ava Gardner because I thought she was excellent and that her scenes were some of her best acting I have seen of her so far. Gardner is so beautiful that you can believe someone who loved her (either in the movies or in real life) could never get over her and it made her character and Henry’s haunting memory of her so believable. Gregory Peck was good he was not fantastic. I love Peck I think he is a great actor but maybe it was the character I did not enjoy him at all. Susan Hayward was as always fabulous. No film ever suffers horribly (unless it is The Conqueror) when she is in it. I was such a doof the whole time I was thinking “I wish Gregory Peck and Susan Hayward made another film together they could be so good in another film with different material” then my brain clicked and I remembered they were in David and Bathsheba together and I own it…. go me and watching movies at one in the morning.

            The Snows of Kilimanjaro is definitely not one of the greatest films I have sat through. I hate it when I find a film starting off pretty well and then by the middle it just bombs and becomes a hassle to sit through. I found watching the film unrestored more fun that paying attention to the story. If you are really interested give The Snows of Kilimanjaro a chance mostly for the cast.

The Killers (1946)

“If there's one thing in this world I hate, it's a double-crossing dame”

he plot for The Killers is one we can still see in many movies today. After watching this you can probably name at least five movies that have this kind of story and twist. What makes The Killers different from the movies of its kind today is you truly do not know who did what until the end. The movie is told as a series of flashbacks as a detective tries to solve the murder of a man.

            The beginning of the movie is sinister: two men are driving down a dark street with booming and mysterious music playing in the background. The two men pull up to a diner in Brentwood, NJ and go inside. They tell the man behind the counter they are waiting for a man named Paul Lund aka the Swede. They know he goes to the diner after work so they wait for him.

When Swede doesn’t show up at his usual time the two men leave to go look for him. Someone from the diner runs to Swede’s place to warn him that two men are coming after to him to kill him. Swede doesn’t care he said he did something wrong and now he has to pay for what he did. The two men eventually come for Swede and shoot him.

            Swede had a small life insurance policy so his death has to be investigated. John Reardon is sent to investigate Swede’s death. He tracks down people from Swede’s past and finds out that he was a boxer named Ole Anderson. He connects with an old friend of Swede’s named Sam Lubinsky who is a detective. Swede’s career ended one night when after a fight the bones in his hand were badly broken. Both Sam and Ole’s girlfriend at the time Lilly were at the fight. After the fight Ole started to hang around with some shady people. He took Lilly to a party one night at the home of “Big Jim” Colfax. There he sees the most beautiful woman he has ever gazed upon: Kitty Collins. From that first meeting his life is never the same again the beautiful woman took such a hold on him that he could think no one and nothing else.

            Everything Swede does is for Kitty. She and Jim play upon Swedes feelings and set him up for one of the greatest double/triple cross story ever.

            The moment this film was over all I said was “wow.” It has got a great story and a great twist. I truly enjoyed every minute of the film. I liked how we see a man lusting after a woman instead of always seeing women who are usually lusting after a man and will do anything for them. Swede risked everything on Kitty and his desire to be with her and was eventually killed for it. Kitty was truly a femme fatale men died for things that she had a large in role in.

            This was my first time seeing Ava Gardner in a film and she was perfect as the femme fatal. With her looks you could tell her character was going to be some form of trouble. She was so gorgeous in everything she wore. The smoldering, lustful looks towards Swede are to die for. I had always expected Ava Gardner to have this beautiful, sexy deep voice so when she first spoke in the film I was a little taken aback by her somewhat high voice… that does not in any form take away from her sexual appeal. One of my favorite parts of the film is when Big Jim is planning out the robbery of a factory and Kitty says something that he does not like so he says “Keep your mouth shut or get it slapped shut” and she comes back with “If you slap me you won’t live to see morning”, I love the way Ava Gardner says this line and how it shows Kitty’s feistiness and how she’s not afraid of Big Jim.

            This was Burt Lancaster’s first film roll. I believe that this is my first film seeing him as well and he did an excellent job. He and Ava Gardner had such good chemistry together and he was so good playing the lustful man after Kitty.

            Richard Siodmak directed the film with his fabulous Noir touch. He captured the lustful looks of Kitty, Swedes desire and lust for Kitty, and all the emotions of both characters so perfectly. 

 

            The Killers is based off a short story by Ernest Hemingway. The only part of the screenplay which comes from the short story is the beginning when the killers are in the diner looking for Swede. The rest was written by Anthony Veiller and an uncredited John Huston who would later have a successful career as a director.

             Definitely see The Killers if you are a fan of Film Noir. The Killers is one of those films that set the bar for all other crime and noir films that were to come. It is an excellent example in acting, writing, and directing.