An exquisite jewel of a film in this 35mm nitrate print, A Farewell to Arms is arguably more Borzage than it is Hemingway; but for quite a while it was neither, its luscious beginning having been cut to contemporary censorship requirements, and Borzage's original ending replaced by the studio's compromise ending (in which Catherine Barkley doesn't exactly die; rather her fate is left ambiguous). Tonight, we present the film with both beginnings, and both endings.
Borzage interprets the story of a soldier (Gary Cooper) who deserts for the love of a nurse (Helen Hayes) with all the tender, passionate warmth made equally conspicuous by its absence in Hemingway's novel. But if Borzage disappointed aficionados of the Lost Generation, he put a smile on the face of the surrealists, for whom A Farewell to Arms, with its world-denying amour fou, is a key work. A major Paramount production that was for years a “lost film” and is still relegated to relative obscurity, A Farewell to Arms features unforgettable performances by Cooper and Hayes, and by Adolphe Menjou as Rinaldi.