A Farewell To Arms review

The first, and still the best, adap of a Hemingway novel. In this 1932 classic from director Frank Borzage, set in WW1 Italy, Gary Cooper is the US ambulance driver who falls for Helen Hayes’ English nurse and goes AWOL to join her – to find she’s pregnant with his child and dying.

Tales of love against all odds always brought out Borzage’s strongest instincts, and here his sense of romantic tragedy carries the film in an irresistible emotional sweep, aptly backed by Wagner’s Liebestod theme.

Cooper was never more handsome, and the chemistry between him and Hayes glows from the screen.