OVP: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

Film: For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943)

Stars: Gary Cooper, Ingrid Bergman, Akim Tamiroff, Katina Paxinou

Director: Sam Wood

Oscar History: 9 nominations/1 win (Best Picture, Actor-Gary Cooper, Actress-Ingrid Bergman, Supporting Actor-Akim Tamiroff, Supporting Actress-Katina Paxinou*, Cinematography, Art Direction, Film Editing, Score)

Snap Judgment Ranking: 1/5 stars

Each month, as part of our 2021 Saturdays with the Stars series, we highlight a different one Alfred Hitchcock's Leading Ladies.  This month, our focus is on Ingrid Bergman-click here to learn more about Ms. Bergman (and why I picked her), and click here for other Saturdays with the Stars articles.

As we mentioned when we introduced our month devoted to Ingrid Bergman, the actress got her start in Swedish cinema in the earliest part of her career, but moved to Hollywood in 1939.  She didn't speak English well, and initially assumed that Intermezzo would be her only American film before returning back to Sweden.  However, Intermezzo was a big hit, and David O. Selznick decided to continue to invest in Bergman's career, keeping her in Hollywood to make additional films.  While Intermezzo would've been a fine place for us to start our look at Bergman's career (I've never seen it, I will admit), we're going to start a few years in, when she was a bit more established, but in the wake of Casablanca, was about to become an all-timer level star.  Casablanca, despite winning the Best Picture trophy in 1943, wasn't the film that won Bergman her first Academy Award-it was instead the picture we're going to start our month with, an adaptation of Ernest Hemingway's For Whom the Bell Tolls.

(Spoilers Ahead) For Whom the Bell Tolls is a bit of a "bottle episode film" in that most of the action takes place during the Spanish Civil War in caves near a key bridge that will help to cutoff support for Franco's mission.  Robert Jordan (Cooper), an American language teacher, is tasked with blowing up the bridge to help the anti-fascist cause, and there he meets a group of guerrilla fighters, led by Pablo (Tamiroff) and Pilar (Paxinou).  Pablo is skeptical of helping Robert, but both Pilar and a young woman named Maria (Bergman) overrule him, and begin to help the cause.  In the end, after a lot of detours (more in a second), they are able to blow up the bridge, but at a price-Robert dies in the endeavor, and Maria (whom he has fallen in love with) must leave him behind to take on Franco's men in order for them to have a chance to escape.

That's basically the plot...of a nearly three-hour movie.  For Whom the Bell Tolls was noteworthy to me less as an early indicator of what Bergman could achieve or for being a major Oscar player, and more because it went on forever with nothing happening.  The movie's plotting is egregiously slow, as if they wanted to add an extra season onto a film, and it doesn't really serve a purpose.  Hemingway's novels, for those who are fans (I am not), are about introspection, about men fighting against the elements and themselves, but this movie doesn't service any of that.  It's just three hours of intense toxic masculinity, peppered with female characters that are badly underwritten.

The film won nine Oscar nominations, and some of the tech ones I can get behind to a degree.  The cinematography is beautiful, though it's more because I am a fan of early Technicolor than because it's doing a lot of interesting things (the moonlight is lovely, but at this point I feel like you need more from the film).  Same with the score-yes, it's solid, but it's also not particularly impressive on its own merit (which is weird because this was the first film score to ever be recorded by itself on a vinyl record).  The remainder I was less-involved with, as the editing is nonexistent (seriously-this movie is too long even by our modern "all movies are too long" attitude), and the art direction...it's just a bunch of caves!

The acting is overall pretty bad.  Cooper, who I know many people have allergies to, is not someone I dislike (he's obviously handsome, and occasionally interesting though so far I've preferred him in comedies), but he does nothing with this role.  He plays Robert as wallpaper drying, as if he is trying to read a line from a cue card.  Paxinou & Tamiroff were both nominated (Paxinou even won), but these are one-note performances on the periphery of the picture (both actors are in brownface). Tamiroff does his usual "evil villain" schtick, bringing little to the overall role, while Paxinou gets something to do in her speech about her youth & long-gone beauty (this is surely what won her the Oscar), but it's not enough.  And it's not important enough to the overall movie-for a film that is three hours long it doesn't give any character much growth.

Which leads us to Bergman.  Bergman is one of my favorite actresses, and I'm used to Oscar not picking her best roles, but it's absurd to me that they say her play Ilsa Lund and thought "huh, let's pick that movie where she complains about being ugly because her hair is short for three hours, even though she's still the most beautiful woman in the world."  Bergman is listless and unable to lift this up-there's no fire in this performance, none of the organic signature that would mark her best work.  I cannot comprehend why they picked this, one of her least performances, over her best work in Casablanca, and I am going to try & remember this when I defend the Academy next time against someone who says "they nominate the wrong performances"...because this is a textbook case.