For Whom the Bell Tolls

In my review of The Guns of Navarone last fall, I posited that great film as the prototype for pretty much every action film made since. To be fair, though, I made an exception for Sam Wood's 1943 adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom The Bell Tolls, which I finally saw today. This film provides the blue-print for pretty much every commando film ever made (not only Navarone, but also The Bridge on the River Kwai, The Dirty Dozen, Where Eagles Dare, Kelly's Heroes, and any others you'd care to name), from the exotic war-time locale to the simple mission to the cynical outsider protagonist to the female fighters who provide convenient love interests to the group member who can't quite be trusted to the large-scale action scenes. However, perhaps because of the source material, Wood's film doesn't just settle for being a fun adventure film. It revels in seriousness and self-importance, and at 165 minutes in the restored version drags like nobody's business - not to mention being badly dated in a number of ways. To its credit, however, the film remains watchable and largely entertaining, and at least has a pay-off for the lengthy build-up.

Set during the Spanish Civil War of the late '30s, where the Communist Republicans clash with the Fascist Nationalists for control of the country (with the USSR supporting the Republicans while Nazi Germany and Italy back Franco's Nationalists), the film centers on Robert Jordan (Gary Cooper), a once-idealistic American professor-turned-explosives expert working for the Republicans. Jordan is hired by Republican General Golz (Leo Bugakov) to blow up a bridge in the Meseta Central mountains, in conjunction with a Republican military offensive. Jordan falls in with a group of Republican partisans hiding in the mountains, and immediately butts heads with Pablo (Akim Tamaroff), the leader whose men suspect of him being a coward (or worse). He also falls for Maria (Ingrid Bergman), the survivor of horrific experiences at the hands of the Nationalists, and gains the respect of Pablo's tough wife Pilar (Katina Paxinou), who takes over as the band's de facto leader when Pablo's loyalty comes into question. After much internicine squabbling, Jordan and company carry out their daring raid, only to find themselves alone, the Republicans having all but abandoned them.

Made at the height of World War II, Wood's adaptation of the Hemingway tome is predictably (if understandably) filled to the brim with crude and obvious anti-Fascist speechifying. Clearly the audience is meant to see Jordan as a forward-thinking, patriotic American who had the guts to take on the Fascists while his country (along with Britain and France) is still prevaricating ("They don't shoot people for being Republicans in America"). The film is careful not to dole out much praise to the Soviets, who were the only country to overtly support the Republicans, a decidedly canny move, but sees the Republicans as a force for objective good, when more nuanced writers like George Orwell indicate that they were ultimately as evil and crooked as the Fascists they opposed. The Republicans are presented as the usual virtuous foreign freedom fighters, save for the cowardly and self-serving Pablo, who is simply a bad egg.

The movie's politics mark it as very much the product of its time, but unfortunately so do the production values. Although the movie does have some nice scenery (filmed in the Sierra Nevadas), it is interspersed with a great many scenes on obvious sets. Some of the otherwise impressive battle scenes are marred by cuts that move directly from location shots to blatantly fake back-drop sets - it's impossible to buy it, and Ray Rennahan's beautiful Technicolor cinematography only accentuates this problem. Victor Young's overbearing score is another major flaw, the ultimate example of over-emotive wall-to-war scoring that goes through the entire movie - there's scarcely a moment without some kind of bombastic music swelling up in the background.

The movie's length is also a problem. The length in and of itself wouldn't be a problem, but to put it bluntly, much of the film is more or less useless. The entire first half of the film is spent preparing for the raid, with a great many scenes set in the partisan's cave, where much time and dialogue is spent arguing about what course to take, and ultimately what to do with Pablo. Wood makes every point obvious and explained to the letter, leading to overlong and exhaustingly talky sequences that will undoubtedly try the patience of most modern viewers. The second half moves at a much faster pace, as the build-up is interspersed with well-handled action scenes and the film actually goes somewhere, but the deadening crawl of the first 90 minutes is certainly hard to take.

Still, the movie has its share of virtues which make it worth a look. The action scenes, in spite of some of the problems indicated above, hold up pretty well, particularly the final raid on the bridge, which remains an exciting and well-executed set-piece 66 years later. Although the first half drags like nobody's business, the build-up in the second half definitely leads to a worthwhile payoff. And as said above, Rennahan's cinematography is gorgeous - it's a shame that they couldn't afford to shoot more scenes on location rather than on sets. As draggy as the first half can be, at least the conclusion makes it worth sitting through, and not a complete waste of time.

Gary Cooper is very much at home in the lead role, as the alternately idealistic and cynical Yankee far from home, fighting for a hopeless cause. It's far from Cooper's best work, but he does a great job with the part, playing his usual sensitive tough guy character perfected in Lives of a Bengal Lancer, Beau Geste and Sergeant York. Ingrid Bergman is lovely as the tragic Maria, her legendary beauty and charisma shining through her deliberately awful haircut and giving a degree of depth to an otherwise cliched character. The supporting cast, curiously, is made up largely of well-known Russian expatriate actors like Akim Tamaroff (Lord Jim), Vladimir Sokoloff (The Magnificent Seven) and Mikhail Rasummy (Wake Island) - not one of whom is remotely convincing as a Spaniard. Tamaroff in particular is laughable, looking for all the world like Bluto from the Popeye cartoons. The one gem in the supporting cast is Greek actress Katina Paxinou as the tough Pilar, giving a refreshingly strong and charismatic performance.

I'm not sure how I want to exactly rate the film, or whether or not to recommend it. Certainly the slow pace, lengthy build-up, ethnically-incorrect casting and blatantly obvious sets will put many viewers off, but the film still has its virtues for the patient viewer. If nothing else, For Whom the Bell Tolls is worth watching as an early example of the Hollywood action film - a genre which has come to dominae the box office in the past thirty years - and at the very least, it's more intelligent and thoughtful than most of its modern-day counterparts. If ever a classic movie screamed out for a remake, it's definitely this one.

Rating: Somewhere between a six and seven out of ten.