(Oneida, NY – May 2015) Ernest Hemingway’s third novel, set in wartime Italy, comes to life at Oneida Public Library in the rarely seen 1932 classic film “A Farewell to Arms,” which will be shown Thursday May 7 at 7 p.m.
Part of the OPL’s series of films set in World War I, “A Farewell to Arms” stars Helen Hayes as the British Red Cross nurse Catherine Barkley and Gary Cooper as the American volunteer ambulance driver Frederic Henry. Their star-crossed love affair is set amid the war waged between Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire in the Alpine frontier between the two nations.
In 1932, Helen Hayes was already hailed as the First Lady of the American Theater, while Gary Cooper was solidifying his Hollywood star status. Their pairing as Hemingway’s war-weary lovers proved remarkably successful at the box office, and “A Farewell to Arms” was one of the most popular films of 1932. It won an Academy Award for its cinematographer Charles Lang.
Hemingway’s biographer Michael Reynolds calls “A Farewell to Arms,” “the premier American war novel from that debacle, World War I.” The novel, like the film, has as its centerpiece the Battle of Caporetto (Oct.-Nov. 1917), in which Italian troops were routed disastrously by a surprise Austrian/German attack. The Italians suffered 10,000 dead, 30,000 wounded and 265,000 taken prisoner. The battle’s depiction and the executions that followed, coupled with Hemingway’s sharp critique of the Italian military, was a key reason why the novel was banned in Italy by the Fascist regime.
The film viewing is free and open to the public.
For more information, stop by the Oneida Library, 220 Broad St., or call 363-3050.