Terrible adaptation of Heminway's low key love story. An American soldier (Rock Hudson) falls in love with a British nurse (Jennifer Jones) in Italy during World War 1. What's wrong with this? Virtually everything. Hudson is WAY out of his depth here. He could be a good actor but not in this movie. Jones is far too old for her role (she's 21 in the book--here she's 38...and looks it!). Also her acting wavered between overdone and underdone! They took a simple low-key love story and blew it all out of proportion. The film is fatally long (a little over 150 minutes), self-indulgent and padded to a ridiculous degree. It seems producer David O. Selznick thought he was doing "Gone With the Wind" again. Some of the scenery is truly stunning (even on a small TV screen) but there's not enough of a story to match the images.

SPOILER!!! The ending where Jones dies is supposed to be tragic but the bad acting and overblown theatrics had me fighting not to laugh!

To make matters worse actor Vittorio De Sica overacts to a truly embarrassing degree. Overblown, self-indulgent, badly cast and slow. Pretty terrible. This was (understandably) a financial and critical bomb and ended Selznick's career as a producer. You might want to tune in for some of the scenery at the end but it's really not worth it. I give this a 3.