For Whom the Bell Tolls

In spite of its almost interminable and physically exhausting length—it takes two hours and fifty minutes to cover less than four days in a group of people's lives—and in spite of some basic detruncations of the novel's two leading characters, it vibrates throughout with vitality and is topped off with a climax that's a whiz. Read full review

For Whom the Bell Tolls is one of the important pictures of all time although almost three hours of running time can overdo a good thing. Read full review

Once the political correctness is side-stepped, this contains classic chemistry from its two leads. Read full review

Victor Young’s score is glorious and soaring and Ray Rennanhan’s cinematography is breathtakingly lush and vibrant. Equally vibrant are Cooper and Bergman, who both received Oscar nominations. Two of the most beautiful people to ever grace the silver screen, their love scenes are sexy, touching and sweet. Read full review

As an American fighting with the partisans in the Spanish Civil War, Cooper makes a perfect Hemingway hero, robust and romantic in equal measures. Falling in love with Ingrid Bergman's peasant guerilla makes a lot of sense too, but the film's a mess dramatically. Wood approaches the material with kid gloves, when Hemingway was always a bare-knuckle fighter. Read full review

Cast mostly with Russians in all the Hispanic roles, this glamourfest is Hollywood politics at its most apolitical, lacking even the energy of a good B movie. Read full review

Sam Wood's direction is limited to forced perspective compositions and hollow, incantatory line readings, but the craggy landscape shines under Ray Rennahan's Technicolor cinematography.

Handsome, ponderous, politically toned-down treatment of Hemingway's passionately committed novel about an idealistic American (Gary Cooper) fighting with the anti-Franco loyalists in the Spanish Civil War. The casting of Cooper, Ingrid Bergman (his peasant lover) and Oscar-winning Katina Paxinou (gypsy guerrilla leader) couldn't be bettered. [25 May 2003, p.8]

Today it seems remote and overblown, with Bergman, Young's score and Ray Rennahan's muted color photography the chief compensating factors. [03 Dec 1998]

The whole thing became amorphous and confused. Paramount did rather better by the romance than the politics; Ingrid Bergman is lovely and affecting as Maria.