Iv'e read that this is supposed to be an absolutely overwrought misguided big budget movie! and a big flop at the time, .....hmmm nah 2/3 of this movie is actually very good! And I admit I have never read Ernest Hemingways tragic love story!
This movie actually have some of the most impressive co-ordinated battle scenes I've ever seen, that is not faked, cgi, or using back-projection. (LOng before The Longest Day 1962) (For some reason I've seen this movie in some War-movie boxes, and I agree it doesn't belong there, it's a wartime movie and not a war movie!) The hero is an ambulance driver so we are only in the outskirts of War, never in the battle-zones.
Rock Hudson is very good, and he was a new hot star at that time, and this was at the time when he was making tearjerkers with Jane Wyman, a few years before he was seducing Doris Day.
Jennifer Jones is very good too, she was married to producer David O Selznick, so she got many bad reviews just because of that at the time,and yes Love is a Many Splendoured Thing and Good Morning Miss Dove might have suited her better.
Vittorio de Sica!! The great neo-realist director! Bicyckle thief, Umberto D and Miracle in Milan just to mention a few, actually had a huge career as an actor too, for the role in this movie he was actually Oscar nominated!
Alberto Sordi! One of the great Italian comedians! In this film his talents is wasted as a dedicated and warmhearted priest.
Mercedes MacCambridge! has a thankless small role as a snouty nurse.
Oscar Homolka! an even more thankless role as a doctor who apparently reads everything opposite as what it is. When He says Everything is all right, someone is going to die!!
There is too very short scenes that has etched into my mind, and both have to do when they all have to go on the run. This takes place during Italian alpine war against Austria during WW1. 1. A very tired mother carriyng a child, gets a chance to sit down on a lorry small space, she falls asleep and as tired as she is, her baby slips away and falls of the lorry, and the mother is too tired to notice it. 2. Down in a ditch lays a dead mother and a baby still climbs to her dead mother trying to suck milk from her breasts. Those are very tough scence to watch.
Then comes the last 2/3 of the movie and our hero and heroine has fled to Switzerland, and for 30 minutes it becomes a tourist card movie for Switzerland (Though it apparently was Italian alps).
After seeing all the hell that war makes and people fleeing, one might think that such sights might have etched into the soul of a man, something that might not be too easy to brusk off. But not in this movie! Once they have fled to Switzerland, everything is suddenly happy and jouyous, and you wait for an Oompa Bumpa band with Yoddelers to appear behind any tree.
anyway the first 2/3 is very good!
This movie actually have some of the most impressive co-ordinated battle scenes I've ever seen, that is not faked, cgi, or using back-projection. (LOng before The Longest Day 1962) (For some reason I've seen this movie in some War-movie boxes, and I agree it doesn't belong there, it's a wartime movie and not a war movie!) The hero is an ambulance driver so we are only in the outskirts of War, never in the battle-zones.
Rock Hudson is very good, and he was a new hot star at that time, and this was at the time when he was making tearjerkers with Jane Wyman, a few years before he was seducing Doris Day.
Jennifer Jones is very good too, she was married to producer David O Selznick, so she got many bad reviews just because of that at the time,and yes Love is a Many Splendoured Thing and Good Morning Miss Dove might have suited her better.
Vittorio de Sica!! The great neo-realist director! Bicyckle thief, Umberto D and Miracle in Milan just to mention a few, actually had a huge career as an actor too, for the role in this movie he was actually Oscar nominated!
Alberto Sordi! One of the great Italian comedians! In this film his talents is wasted as a dedicated and warmhearted priest.
Mercedes MacCambridge! has a thankless small role as a snouty nurse.
Oscar Homolka! an even more thankless role as a doctor who apparently reads everything opposite as what it is. When He says Everything is all right, someone is going to die!!
There is too very short scenes that has etched into my mind, and both have to do when they all have to go on the run. This takes place during Italian alpine war against Austria during WW1. 1. A very tired mother carriyng a child, gets a chance to sit down on a lorry small space, she falls asleep and as tired as she is, her baby slips away and falls of the lorry, and the mother is too tired to notice it. 2. Down in a ditch lays a dead mother and a baby still climbs to her dead mother trying to suck milk from her breasts. Those are very tough scence to watch.
Then comes the last 2/3 of the movie and our hero and heroine has fled to Switzerland, and for 30 minutes it becomes a tourist card movie for Switzerland (Though it apparently was Italian alps).
After seeing all the hell that war makes and people fleeing, one might think that such sights might have etched into the soul of a man, something that might not be too easy to brusk off. But not in this movie! Once they have fled to Switzerland, everything is suddenly happy and jouyous, and you wait for an Oompa Bumpa band with Yoddelers to appear behind any tree.
anyway the first 2/3 is very good!