Limerculer A waste of 90 minutes of my life

ThrillMessage There are better movies of two hours length. I loved the actress'performance.

Voxitype Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.

Tymon Sutton The acting is good, and the firecracker script has some excellent ideas.

Davalon-Davalon I am astonished that anyone could have rated this as a "10." Give me a break!I have not read the book, so perhaps this film does correctly reflect the story that Hemingway wrote. Nonetheless, as a film it is deadly. As others have correctly pointed out, Gary Cooper was wooden throughout. He finally rises to the occasion in the last thirty seconds of the film where he realizes he has the strength to shoot the machine gun at the enemy by thinking of "Maria" (Ingrid Bergman). It's also at this point that the film slips into voice-over mode; it's jarring. Ingrid Bergman was, without a doubt, stunningly beautiful; that could not be argued. I also felt that she was a good actress -- but not necessarily in this film. It isn't her fault; it's what she was given to work with -- a dull, uninspired, script. Let's talk about that script. There were a lot of questions and answers that repeated the questions. There was mundane, banal, dull, laughable. The movie went on endlessly and for what... because Gary had to blow up a bridge at dawn, "Those are orders!" -- and so we, the viewing audience, must also wait until "dawn" while Gary, Ingrid and a band of misfits point fingers at each other, drink wine, eat, and apparently never bathe or take a dump. The only actors that I found to be interesting were Katina Paxinou, who had a sort of ferociousness about her performance (and the Academy awarded her), and Akim Tamiroff, who looked like the original Hobbitt. As the movie wanders around mountains and fights between nationalists and republicans or somebody and somebody, the only thing that seems to be of concern to Ingrid is whether Gary is okay. In fact, that seems to be the only thing that matters to Katina as well. Despite all the talk of liberation and freeing themselves from their oppressors (this was supposedly the Spanish Civil War), all that seemed to matter was whether Ingrid was happy. While I did enjoy looking at Ingrid's pretty face, and Gary's eyes were killer, I could not understand what she saw in him. He was twice her age, if not more, and he kissed with the passion of a sedated goldfish. It's an old film. It's slow. I felt that emotions were manipulated beyond all reason. I just did not enjoy it. So 2 out of 10, 1 for Ingrid's face, 1 for Gary's eyes.

robert-642 I'm currently studying the Spanish Civil War as told through the medium of cinema. I came across this film and with high expectations of a good story with fine acting I bought it from Amazon. How wrong can one be! If melodrama had a rating of one to ten and ten being the worst this would be nudging the ten. Apart from the fine acting of Gary Cooper, the rest of the cast were shameful. It seemed as if they were reading their lines from a board but had problems because they were semi-literate. Example: To-morr-ow we sha-ll go to the bri-dge. Oh dear! The only decent lines spoken in normal fashion were those by Katina Paxinou.Even the delightful Bergman was so far over the top she could have met herself coming back. And those gleaming teeth! The studio missed a golden opportunity. They could have inserted a sponsors speech bubble every so often."Even in war you can have shiny teeth with new 'Gleemy-Teeth'.As for the war itself. A joke surely? Scant attention was given to anything political. I correct myself: no attention was given.Finally it can't be put down to: 'the films of the time' because lots of other films made in the same period were nowhere near as appalling - especially the war films.Bottom line. Hollywood has and always will be useless at making films about other countries wars.zero out of ten.

gtferg Cooper gets his just deserts for poking his nose into someone else's war.Bergman keeps whittering on about her cropped hair, not appreciating that she looks much better with short cropped hair .Cooper and Bergman should have rented a motel room in Madrid and saved us all two and a half hours of rubbish.Over the top relationship hijacked the film despite Ingrid looking cute.If the film had been 90 minutes long without the dire music, it could have been worthwhile.At least they gave the Oscar to right person although Pablo also turned in a decent performance.Despite Pablo and Ingrid being fond of the horses, they did not seem to mind when several were shot in combat.No anti-piracy or advertising films thank goodness.Packaging quotes Variety as saying this is one of the most important films of all time ! I conclude Variety has a sense of humour or needs to watch a few more films

zardoz-13 Although Ernst Hemingway chose Ingrid Bergman and Gary Cooper as the leads in director Sam Wood's cinematic adaptation of "For Whom the Bell Tolls," the novelist hated the movie because the repressive Hollywood Production Code Administration made Paramount Pictures excise virtually all of the political content of "Stagecoach" scenarist Dudley Nichols' script. Indeed, what the Production Code did was to remove anything derogatory about General Franco's regime, ruling in Spain at that point, that Cooper and his Nationalist resistance compatriots sought to defeat. This was certainly not the first movie that had its plot eviscerated. The 1938 Spanish Civil War movie "Blockade" with Henry Fonda has suffered a similar fate. It was obvious which side was right and which side was wrong, but the Code prevented them from identifying them by name."For Whom the Bell Tolls" takes place in 1937 during the Spanish Civil War as the protagonist, American teacher-turned-Republican soldier Robert Jordan, blasts a Nationalist troop train to smithereens. Enemy soldiers swarm after Jordan (Gary Cooper of "Sergeant York") and his friend Kashkin (Feodor Fedorovich Chaliapin Jr. of "Mission to Moscow") and wound the latter. Kashkin holds Jordan to his promise to kill him because he refuses be captured. Nobody wants to fall into the savage hands of the Republicans. This form of mercy killing is a rule of thumb among the Republican. Nevertheless, Jordan hates having to kill Kaskhin and calls it "murder." Meantime, Jordan escapes to Madrid to rendezvous with Republican General Golz (Leo Bulgakov of "This Land is Mine") briefs him on a new mission to dynamite an important bridge at the same time that the Republicans launch a surprise air assault. Jordan has three days to prepare. An older Spanish guide Anselmo (Vladimir Sokoloff of "Scarlet Street") leads our hero to the bridge spanning a gorge and then escorts him to a Nationalist outpost in a mountain cave not far from the structure. A small band of guerrilla fighters and Gypsy refugees take orders from Pablo (Akim Tamiroff of "Union Pacific") and his fire breathing wife Pilar. According to his wife, Pablo has lost his nerve and she supervises their exploits. Pilar (Katina Paxinou of "Confidential Agent") has nothing but contempt for her cowardly drunkard of a husband. Robert conceals the explosive in the cave and gets to know his new companions, among them a carefree gypsy Rafael (Mikhail Rasumny of "Comrade X"); Primitivo (Victor Varconi of "Strange Cargo"); Andres (Eric Feldary of "Cloak and Dagger"), Fernando (Fortunio Bonanova of "Citizen Kane"), and young Maria, (Ingrid Bergman of "Casablanca"), a Spanish refugee that the Nationalists raped after they shot her parents. Palo and his men rescued Maria from a prison train. Robert needs Pablo's assistance to blow up the bridge. Pablo, worried about a Nationalist reprisal, gives Jordan the cold shoulder. Meanwhile, Pilar warns Jordan that Pablo cannot be trusted. Pablo is not happy since Pilar has assumed command of his men and behaves in a suspicious manner. Later, Fernando reveals that he left camp to be with his wife in the city. He eavesdropped on loquacious Nationalists chatting about gossip of a possible Republican attack on the bridge. Pilar, Maria and Robert climb through the mountains to meet the rebel El Sordo (Joseph Calleia of "The Gorilla"), a renegade gypsy, who agrees to steal the horses they need to escape after the bridge is destroyed. Gradually, over a three day interval, Jordan and Maria become lovers. Eventually, Maria tells him that the Nationalist soldier abused her. Mind you, Nichols could not use the word 'rape' in 1943, and Jordan doesn't want to hear about the details. A snowstorm has everybody worried that Nationalist patrols may spot the tracks of El Sordo's stolen horses and follow them to the cave. Pablo's drunken behavior prompts the others send him into exile. After Pablo's departure, Pilar reveals that Pablo has not always yellow. When the war began, Pablo proved himself a courageous leader. Organizing the citizens against a Nationalist attack, Pablo helped save their town. He blew up the wall around the city hall where the Nationalists had been cornered and decided not to give up. Pablo forced these city officials to face the wrath of the citizens. These men brave a gauntlet before the enraged citizens hurl them off a high cliff to their deaths. The savagery of his countrymen sickens Pablo and refuses to participate in the fighting. Later, Pablo shows up at the cave with a change of heart and agrees to support Jordan's mission to blow the bridge. The next day, Robert has to shoot a Nationalist cavalryman who rides too close to the cave. A patrol rides up and El Sordo's gang diverts them from Jordan and company. El Sordo and his men take refuge in a mountain outpost and fight until fighter planes wipe them out. Meanwhile, the treacherous Pablo sabotages Jordan's equipment. Anselmo warns Jordan that Nationalist troops are fortifying the bridge. Robert fears that the Nationalists know of the Republican surprise attack. He dispatches Andres on a hopeless mission behind enemy lines with a message for Golz to cancel the offensive. During the night, Jordan and Maria make love. Before dawn, Pilar uncovers Pablo's treachery, and Robert rigs up make-shift detonators from hand grenade. As Jordan is placing the dynamite, a Nationalist armored column trundles into view. The bridge is destroyed, but Anselmo dies in the blast. As Jordan and company escape, the soldiers open fire and a shell knocks Jordan off his horse and he breaks his leg. Jordan convinces Maria to leave with Pillar and Pablo and dies when the soldiers rush him.Director Sam Wood paces the action so that he can tell several stories at once and he generates considerable suspense and tension in the final quarter hour of this epic. The legendary production designer William Cameron Menzies created the fake bridge over the gorge. Composer Victor Young's score is wonderfully evocative.