You might think Ernest Hemingway's writing would be easily adapted for movie-making—plenty of action, terse dialogue, not a lot of psychological stream of consciousness.

But much of Hemingway's greatness is how he puts words together, his understated stylism. For example, at the beginning of his World War I novel, A Farewell to Arms, he presents the spectacle of the armies moving back and forth through the landscape and the villages, powdering the trees with their dust. As he describes this, the rhythms of his rolling sentences with their repetitive simple terms creates an incredibly evocative passage, setting a world-weary tone for all that is to follow in the lives of two young people caught up in the war and in the excitement of discovering each other amid all the cynicism. In a film though, you can only show pictures of armies marching, bombs exploding, and lovers embracing. Not the same thing.

The novel is quite worldly, very adult for its time in its clear-eyed depiction of both war and love. It's not surprising however that films would take a more sentimental approach. The 1932 film with Gary Cooper as the ambulance driver Frederick Henry, an American in the Italian army, and Helen Hayes as the nurse Catherine Barkley, does provide some mature content, implying sex between the unmarried couple (although they are excused by an informal marriage service carried out by a sympathetic priest), resulting in a pregnancy. The couple are separated with her running off to Switzerland to have the baby and him deserting to look for her—at the risk of his life. A teary ending and that's about it. The hour and a half of film time doesn't allow for more than a few montages of actual warfare, requires cutting out the couple's entire stay in Switzerland, and replaces the masterful, lonely finale of the novel with a corny scene of Coops bearing his lover's dead body to a sun-streaming window, crying out "Peace... peace!" as bells peal out news of the armistice.

If we forget the novel though (usually a wise move) and just look at the film as a romantic epic of Hollywood's bad old days, this adaptation does have quite a few merits. Innovative camera work. Moody lighting. Adolphe Menjou as Rinaldi, the Italian doctor who is both fun-loving buddy and rival to Lt. Henry. I suspect the film was shot almost entirely in studios, as films usually were in those days, but the settings are convincing. And despite their sometimes awkward difference in size—Hayes in heels doesn't come up to Coooper's shoulders—the leads are appealing: the camera loves them both.

On the other hand, the production is quite dated. This is an early talkie and it is often reminiscent of a just-past era, helmed as it is by silent-film director Frank Borzage. Exaggerated facial gestures. Slow moments when actors seem to be standing around waiting for others to finish their lines, so they can deliver theirs. The first half of the film is hollow-sounding, bereft of background music or incidental sound effects.

Worse, the script takes for granted we understand why the characters act as they do in certain scenes, when the motivations completely elude me. I'm not even sure what Lt. Henry and nurse Barkley see in each other. It's as though there's an unwritten rule that when handsome guy and dishy girl are in the same movie together, after a certain point it's understood they are deeply in love. Who'd you expect to win the gal, Adolphe Menjou?

The 1957 remake of A Farewell to Arms with Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones as the war-crossed lovers seems like a good idea. Update the film technically with colour and improved sound. Give it more time, two and a half hours, to develop the characters and include more of Hemingway's story. Play it more sophisticatedly for a more knowing audience. Make the war scenes grittier.

But this adaptation, directed by the workmanlike Charles Vidor, raises the romance to an even greater height, again swamping with sentiment the harder side of Hemingway's story. Again the actors are up to the romantic task, and it's quite good as that kind of film for its own period. Famed Italian actor Vittorio De Sica takes the Rinaldi role, as credibly as you would expect. But this Farewell to Arms is still not anywhere near what Hemingway created.

On the other hand, why bitch about it? Perhaps filming Hemingway's story would have resulted in a drearier film that would interest no one, except a few Hemingway purists like myself.

I should probably be thankful I've never seen the 1966 television mini-series of Farewell to Arms starring George Hamilton and Venessa Redgrave.

A 1951 movie, Force of Arms, directed by Michael Curtiz and featuring William Holden as an American soldier in Italy, is supposed to be an uncredited update of A Farewell to Arms to the Second World War. Didn't see that one either. Will try not to.