A Farewell to Arms

Directed by Frank Borzage, A Farewell to Arms follows a soldier (Gary Cooper’s Frederic Henry) as he meets and falls for a nurse (Helen Hayes’ Catherine Barkley) during the First World War. Filmmaker Borzage, armed with a script by Oliver H. P. Garrett and Benjamin Glazer, delivers a sluggish and predominantly uninvolving misfire that falls right in line with its underwhelming literary predecessor, as the movie, which runs an often interminable 88 minutes, suffers from an almost total lack of an entry point that prevents the viewer from working up any interest in or sympathy for the protagonists’ dull exploits – with the arms-length atmosphere perpetuated by an erratically-paced narrative that contains few, if any, wholeheartedly compelling elements or digressions (ie it’s all just so tedious). And while Borzage offers up a small handful of impressively stylish interludes, A Farewell to Arms, which, on top of everything else, boasts at its core a romance that couldn’t possibly be less compelling, builds towards a fairly endless final stretch that ensures it concludes on about as lackluster a note as one could envision – with the end result a pointless adaptation that wears out its welcome right from the get-go.

* out of ****