War’s Peace.
Borzage’s literary adaptations of the ’30s are a varied bunch, often having to do with recent or current political events, and always showing Borzage’s ability to transform his material into the kind of romantic and spiritual fables he preferred. At first glance, Borzage and Hemingway might seem a mismatch. If the two are in conflict at all, Borzage certainly comes out on top.
A FAREWELL TO ARMS features a striking amount of blatant studio artifice for a story about recent real-world events, to the point where it feels like a deliberate strategy to allow the director, and Hollywood, to put their own stamp on the subject. Some of these moments of theatrical splendour are more effective than others. I’m a little undecided about the opening shot.
We begin with a Murnau-style imaginary landscape, composed partly of painting and partly of miniature. The camera cranes down –
– to a full-size dead soldier, in a striking and entirely successful blend of diorama and reality. That corpse looks a little bit like Borzage, actually. And then –
– we carry on our glide left, revealing that the dead body is minus a leg. Then a tiny model truck putters out from behind the hill or slain soldier rests on. The aim is forced perspective: we should believe that the truck is a considerable distance away. But the toy car’s movement reveals it instantly for what it is, giving it the impression of having just emerged from the corpse’s trouser leg. This juxtaposition — missing limb and Tonka Toy truck — may be one of the most striking clashes of intended realism and striking artificiality I’ve ever seen.
It’s uncertain the average audience member at the time would have perceived the clash. When a friend asked her mum whether she was ever bothered by the obvious process shots of people in moving cars in old movies, the mother replied, “I don’t think it ever occurred to us that it might be anything other than what it looked like.” If that’s so (and it almost certainly wasn’t universally so) then Borzage’s stylisation, reminiscent of SUNRISE, a film that seems to have instantly influenced him to a substantial degree when he was working alongside Murnau at Fox, might have been imperceptible at the time. But I think it must have had some subconscious effect. Borzage’s films are often about the transformation of the world, or our perception of it, by love: a slum becomes heaven. It’s much the same theme as is illustrated in a musical whenever we move from spoke to sung dialogue, or from walking to dancing.
If all that’s true, Borzage might be attempting a pretty profound statement in this shot, by forcing into such tight proximity the convincing simulacrum of a dead man, and a miniature world of theatrical fakery. Am I getting carried away here?
November 21, 2008 at 2:28 pm
No.
November 21, 2008 at 2:49 pm
Good!
November 21, 2008 at 3:54 pm
The thing with me is that I know it’s special effects and artifice but I feel real emotions for what happens. And that’s because of the way people react. A good example is the second scene, the first time the two lovers meet(legs again important). Frederic and Rinaldi check out this Italian girl(who converses with her feet, toes and toenails) and the entire place gets bombed and people suddenly hop left, right and centre but Gary Cooper is still drunk and he can’t tell the difference.
What struck me about ”A Farewell to Arms” is the sense of realness in the surroundings. A strong example is that scene with the four soldiers in the tent(the lighting has to be seen to be believed, Charles Lang’s work here paved the way for what Storaro did in ”Apocalypse Now”) and they keep hearing this sonic sound in the distance and everytime it comes close-close-closer they duck and then return to as they were only to do it again. You see the same thing in Jennings’ documentaries on ww2.
Bazin said that reality can only be attained by artifice. Samuel Fuller, just as wise once said that the only really convincing way to shoot war scenes is to actually fire and bomb the audience as they see the film. So I don’t see the use of studio artifice as limiting the film, on the contrary. The war scenes, brief as they are are powerful and effective and they also avoid the pitfall cited by Truffaut in that they, in toto make it glamorous.
”A Farewell to Arms” is one of the best films about WW1 which is very under-represented, the reason being that unlike WW2 where the Nazis posed a legitimate threat it had no justification and was a total waste of…everything.
Borzage’s film is really a masterpiece, although I have had the tremendous misfortune of seeing it in prints with bad sound. One question, did the print you use have erratic sounds with the pitch and sound varying from scene to scene. Still the visuals and the acting are so powerful. The scene where Gary Cooper breaks down and prays in the cafe while around him they are celebrating the Italian victory is stunning and it’s Cooper’s best piece of acting.
November 21, 2008 at 8:43 pm
The sound on my copy is very low for dialogue and very high for everything else. Don’t think there was a problem specifically with pitch, just levels.
I can think of a few WWI films, and it’s popular with those who want to make an anti0war statement. But WWII is really better for that, since most people agree that WWI was a waste: if you can criticise “the good war” you’ve done the lot.
Much bigger piece on this film coming in an hour or so… I agree with all you say about it.
November 21, 2008 at 9:26 pm
I didn’t mean about anti-war statement. I don’t think making a film saying that war is bad is really possible since we all know, even Bush knows, that war is bad.
What can be done is show how people live with war, what that does to them as people and above all what convinces such sane people to go through with it. In ”A Farewell to Arms”, the soldiers and nurses deal with it with a hard professional toughness to protect themselves mentally and emotionally. In any case, the main reason why Catherine dies isn’t directly because of the war so you can’t say her death is reason to say “A Farewell to Arms”, rather it’s because those people are prevented and seperated from connecting to each other emotionally and personally that they are able to continue. The only social contact being favoured are with whores and partakers of casual sex.
The moment two characters find themselves, the other’s life more important than theirs they are unable to function in their duties. Basically lovers are bad soldiers and nurses. And to Borzage, that says more about war than about the two of them. Adolphe Menjou’s character(so wonderful) finally really becomes his war-brother when he also realizes this fact. Before he was just his grandee. One of the most surprising things for me is how non-macho Gary Cooper is(even for Borzage like Charles Farrell and Spencer Tracy are more macho). He’s very sensitive and as far from Hemingway as you’ll get, in fact a total subversion of the great self-made myth…er man.
Fuller’s ”The Big Red One” is the closest to an anti-war WW2 film. “The only glory in war is that of the survivors!” is a real spanner thrown at audiences. Amazing that an actual veteran made that film and was so honest about his experience.
November 21, 2008 at 11:17 pm
I’d put How I Won the War fairly high up as a WWII film that robs the war movie of its traditional pleasures and excitement, replacing them with bitter irony and absurdity.
Yes, the problem is most people think war is bad, but can easily be persuaded that the next one is sadly necessary.
I love what you have to say about this film, so don’t feel bad about long posts: you crystallise my feelings and express them better!