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1.3 KiB
Plaintext
1 line
1.3 KiB
Plaintext
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. <br /><br />SPOILER!!! The ending where Jones dies is supposed to be tragic but the bad acting and overblown theatrics had me fighting not to laugh! <br /><br />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. |