A Farewell to Arms

Vittorio De Sica as the almost-smarmy Rinaldi conducts his American ambulance driver friend Frederic (Rock Hudson), back at the base in the Italian Alps after leave, to meet the new English nurses, especially Miss Barkley (Jennifer Jones), in David O. Selznick’s production, from Hemingway, A Farewell To Arms, 1957.

Leaving their base (Charles Vidor directing on location, in the eastern Italian Alps near Venzone), ambulance driver Frederic (Rock Hudson) is desperate to see British nurse Catherine (Jennifer Jones) after their torrid one-night liaison, in the 1957 version of Hemingway’s A Farewell To Arms, produced by Jones’ husband, David Selznick.

Grandeur and literary credentials, Charles Vidor directs and Rock Hudson narrates, roughly from the Hemingway novel, opening producer David O. Selznick’s 1957 production, co-starring Selznick’s wife, Jennifer Jones, Kurt Kasznar, Franco Interlenghi and Leopold Trieste introduced, in A Farewell To Arms.

Something like fidelity to the Hemingway novel, via Laurence Stallings’ play and Ben Hecht’s script, of the second encounter between American WWI ambulance driver Frederic Henry (Rock Hudson) and Brit nurse Catherine (Jennifer Jones), who spoke earlier of her fianceè, killed in action, in A Farewell To Arms, 1957.

A Farewell to Arms (1957), Ernest Hemingway's story of an affair between an English nurse an an American soldier on the Italian front during World War I.