Two days before shooting was due to commence on the David O. Selznick remake of Ernest Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms ('57), director John Huston left the set in the Italian Alps, following a disagreement with the producer. At a press conference a few weeks later, Selznick explained that singly their differences would sound trivial, but there were "hundreds of them". Calling Huston "a talented man", the producer said there are certain men who ought to do their own producing.
Selznick's definition of a producer's duties was that he supervise "every camera set-up, every frame". He said his understanding with Charles Vidor, who replaced Huston, was complete. Nevertheless, he added that there was need for more rugged individuals (indicating Huston and himself) making movies. Beyond Farewell, Selznick enumerated his future plans as package deals with 20th-Fox for Tender Is the Night and Mary Magdalene; developing Gone With The Wind as a stage operetta; and a TV spectacular of Rebecca, sometime within the next two years.
Between Huston's desertion on 22 March 1957, and Vidor's appointment on 5 April, the film had been carried on by second unit director Andrew Marton, who had completed shooting all the film's major battle scenes - involving 14,000 soldiers and 2,000 mules and horses - before Vidor arrived at the Udine location.
Although more faithful to Hemingway than the earlier version with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes (in that film, Henry deserted because he suspected that Rinaldi was having an affair with Catherine), Selznick's remake entirely fails to capture the spirit of the novel. One example will perhaps suffice to show how thoroughly the film overdoes things. The last line of the novel reads: "After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain."
In the overdone film, however, Rock Hudson walks out of the hospital; we hear music, and then the voice of Jennifer Jones. Next we have a brief flashback in which Jones says, "We're going to have a strange life, but it's the only life I want." The flashback fades out, a heavenly choir fades in, and we see the early morning sun as Hudson retreats down a long avenue. Then it begins to rain. Overdone!
Another example: Vidor seems to have mistaken the retreat from Caporetto for the flight from Atlanta, and has tried to make a Technicolor epic out of black-and-white non-epic material. He is not helped, either, by the playing. Rock Hudson is not an actor who can quote Andrew Marvell and get away with it. Jennifer Jones unleashes too much hysterical emotion at the beginning of the film to have any reserves left for her ordeal at the end. Worst offender of all is Alberto Sordi, the wonderful comedian of La Bella di Roma, who is utterly out of his element as a sort of European version of a Bing Crosby priest.
On completing A Farewell to Arms, Vidor gave himself an extended vacation. In May 1958, he turned up on the international jury of the eleventh Cannes Film Festival, where he distinguished himself by protesting against the screening of Anthony Asquith's Orders to Kill.
But Charles Vidor was usually quiet-spoken and congenial; although he was always annoyed that pressmen persistently quoted him as saying that the thing of which he was most proud was not his hard-earned success but the fact that he was the best English-speaking Hungarian in Hollywood. This was a tilt at Michael Curtiz that Vidor never meant to be taken seriously.
In Vienna for background filming on Columbia's Song Without End, Charles Vidor suffered a sudden and fatal heart attack in his hotel room on the night of 4 June 1959. He was only 59 years old.
His body was buried at the Los Angeles Home of Peace Mausoleum the following 11 June, while Jack Benny delivered the eulogy at a memorial service in the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.
Selznick's definition of a producer's duties was that he supervise "every camera set-up, every frame". He said his understanding with Charles Vidor, who replaced Huston, was complete. Nevertheless, he added that there was need for more rugged individuals (indicating Huston and himself) making movies. Beyond Farewell, Selznick enumerated his future plans as package deals with 20th-Fox for Tender Is the Night and Mary Magdalene; developing Gone With The Wind as a stage operetta; and a TV spectacular of Rebecca, sometime within the next two years.
Between Huston's desertion on 22 March 1957, and Vidor's appointment on 5 April, the film had been carried on by second unit director Andrew Marton, who had completed shooting all the film's major battle scenes - involving 14,000 soldiers and 2,000 mules and horses - before Vidor arrived at the Udine location.
Although more faithful to Hemingway than the earlier version with Gary Cooper and Helen Hayes (in that film, Henry deserted because he suspected that Rinaldi was having an affair with Catherine), Selznick's remake entirely fails to capture the spirit of the novel. One example will perhaps suffice to show how thoroughly the film overdoes things. The last line of the novel reads: "After a while I went out and left the hospital and walked back to the hotel in the rain."
In the overdone film, however, Rock Hudson walks out of the hospital; we hear music, and then the voice of Jennifer Jones. Next we have a brief flashback in which Jones says, "We're going to have a strange life, but it's the only life I want." The flashback fades out, a heavenly choir fades in, and we see the early morning sun as Hudson retreats down a long avenue. Then it begins to rain. Overdone!
Another example: Vidor seems to have mistaken the retreat from Caporetto for the flight from Atlanta, and has tried to make a Technicolor epic out of black-and-white non-epic material. He is not helped, either, by the playing. Rock Hudson is not an actor who can quote Andrew Marvell and get away with it. Jennifer Jones unleashes too much hysterical emotion at the beginning of the film to have any reserves left for her ordeal at the end. Worst offender of all is Alberto Sordi, the wonderful comedian of La Bella di Roma, who is utterly out of his element as a sort of European version of a Bing Crosby priest.
On completing A Farewell to Arms, Vidor gave himself an extended vacation. In May 1958, he turned up on the international jury of the eleventh Cannes Film Festival, where he distinguished himself by protesting against the screening of Anthony Asquith's Orders to Kill.
But Charles Vidor was usually quiet-spoken and congenial; although he was always annoyed that pressmen persistently quoted him as saying that the thing of which he was most proud was not his hard-earned success but the fact that he was the best English-speaking Hungarian in Hollywood. This was a tilt at Michael Curtiz that Vidor never meant to be taken seriously.
In Vienna for background filming on Columbia's Song Without End, Charles Vidor suffered a sudden and fatal heart attack in his hotel room on the night of 4 June 1959. He was only 59 years old.
His body was buried at the Los Angeles Home of Peace Mausoleum the following 11 June, while Jack Benny delivered the eulogy at a memorial service in the Wilshire Boulevard Temple.