Hemingway’s, A Farewell to Arms: Does The Film Do Justice To The Novel?

A Farewell to Arms, published in 1929, is a classic short story written by Ernest Hemingway about the hardships and cruelties of love and war. In 1932, a film adaptation of the novel was developed by Director Frank Borzage and nonetheless the unquestionable originality of his photography as well as for his excellent directorial concepts; Borzage misses on many levels of Hemingway’s brilliant description and significant dialogue between the main character Lieutenant Frederic Henry and his fellow Italian officers. The film is voiced and positioned towards the eyes of Borzage rather than the story of Hemingway and the incidents are frequently noticeable throughout the film. But to be reasonable, the novel is a difficult task, considering that the story is told in the first person. If anyone has not read Hemingway’s, A Farewell to Arms, the film will appeal as a rather interesting tragic romance but in some of the scenes, however, the producers take this for granted and assume that the spectator has read the book before. My argument is that the film misses on many of the important aspects that Hemingway’s print version offers. The film does not do justice to the book. Director Frank Borzage focuses merely on the romance characteristics of the story, ignoring the brutalities of war, skipping over many scenes, trying to enhance the melancholy approach to the book.

The films explanations skip too quickly for my liking, from one chapter to another and the sufferings and understandings of Lieutenant Henry are passed over too brusquely, being advised rather than voiced. Violence within the film is drastically censored, in fact there is no recollections of the violence and brutality of war and in some scenes, Borzage does not even attempt ...

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...are executing them on the spot. In the text, Frederic manages to escape by jumping into a river and swimming to safety, this portion of the book is not even mentioned or shown in the film. Overall I have to say that the film is not an actuate representation of Hemingway’s novel.

Director Frank Borzage’s establishes only one aspect of Hemingway’s novel, which is the romance. Having changed the storyline and ending from the novel, Borzage undermines Hemingway’s point of view and ultimately alters the book as a whole. Hemingway’s approach in writing A Farewell to Arms was to show readers the powerful descriptions of life during and immediately following World War I, which Borzage clearly ignores. Both text and film are in opposites from their creators and seeing the clear differences from text and film, it is quite evident that Borzage’s adaptation is false.