A Bell for Adano

Based on John Hersey's bestselling novel, this film hit cinemas at about the same time as Rossellini's films depicting the impact of the occupation upon Italy and doesn't suffer from the comparison.

Done with grace and humour and full of life, it contains the most of the virtues and few of the vices of a Hollywood blockbuster of the period. (Both Joseph LaShelle's high-contrast photography and the use of sound to covey the acoustics of the requisitioned Town Hall add to the atmosphere).

John Hodiak is excellent in the lead and is flanked by a wonderful supporting cast ranging from Marcel Dalio (who at opposite ends of his acting career appeared in the anti-war epics 'La Grande Illusion' and 'Catch-22') to Henry Morgan (later Col. Potter in 'MASH'); while the cast also includes silent director Monty Banks (here billed as 'Montague') and future director Hugo Haas.

In another attempt to depict Americans as the saviours of Europe post-WWII, Henry King's 'A Bell for Adano' centres on the rebuilding of an Italian town bombarded and driven to despair, rescued by the American 'invaders' who come to build civil peace.

The Italians are in the main shown in a comic way, as children who are incapable of governing themselves, or as joke fascists. A curious view at the time in history it was made, right at the end of the war. The Americans (the good-looking Major, the snipey Captain, the loyal but dumb Sergeant) have a bit more character but are still stereotypical Army types.

In the cast, John Hodiak is good as usual, helped this time by the stellar support of Harry Morgan, William Bendix, and Glenn Langan (as a too-good-to-be-true naval officer). Gene Tierney is a bottle-blonde lovely in the town and a love interest for Hodiak, although her acting is little more than passable.

I liked this film in the main as it manages to make an impact within a limited plotline. Now rarely seen and not available on video/DVD, it doesn't deserve to be in obscurity but to be seen and celebrated with other films made during and just after wartime.

I very much enjoyed this movie, so much so that I plan to search out the book. I write this though because many commenters asked why Gene Tierney was a blonde Italian. This would lead me to wonder what they were doing while the movie was running because they obviously weren't watching it. In what I would term a key scene, Hodiak's 'Mr. Major' explains that he was from the Bronx but he didn't see it as beautiful like his Italian immigrant parents do and he always wanted to escape and Tierney's Tina replies that that is why she has blonde hair, that she wants to get away to America but she is unable to leave the village so her escape was to dye her dark hair blonde.

I know that the movie is a bit unrealistic in its characterizations. I know that the movie is a bit heavy-handed in its stereotypical portrayals of the Italians. I know that the movie is fiction, and that no matter how much you try to sugar-coat the story, the fact is that Italy was a member of the Axis alliance, was belligerent and fascist, and went over to the Allied side only after it was thoroughly defeated. So any portrayals of Italians being particularly passive or pro-American circa 1945 must be taken with a huge grain of salt. All this being said, I still liked this movie. The movie brings out, in typical Hollywood fashion, that the United States and the Allies DID liberate Italy from fascism, and which prevented Italy from becoming a total basket case like Germany and Japan became after the war. The pro-American bias of the movie is unmistakable, but as a World War Two movie what else could you expect? The fact is that the United States liberated Western Europe from Nazism and fascism, and movies like "A Bell for Adono" serve to ensure that what the United States did to help Italy and the rest of Europe is not forgotten.

This is another of those very rare films that are like no other films, unique and differing from everything else, while of course you recognize most of the Italian expressions of temperament, emotion and human complications and outbursts from most other Italian films, but this American film actually succeeds in capturing the very Italian element and even the Sicilian element. The town of Adano does not exist and never did, but the inspiration for the Pulitzer winning novel by John Hersey has its source in a small Sicilian town on the south coast close to Agrigento called Licata, and if you know anything about Sicily you would immediately recognize the environment and mentality in the film as Sicilian, if you didn't know it beforehand. John Hodiak as major Joppolo, curiously like John Steinbeck, makes perhaps the role and perfomance of his life, and if you don't remember him for any other performance, you will remember him for this one. William Bendix, always reliable and indomitable as a character actor, is his closest associate and makes as usual a very memorable performance. You will perhaps be shocked to find Gene Tierney here as a blonde Italian, but she makes the best of it. Another character not to bypass, for a short but the more remarkable performance, is Richard Crenna as an Italian soldier and released prisoner. Perhaps the major highlight and most moving scene in the film is when the village, almost exclusively inhabited by women, receives back all its prisoners, sons and husbands that have been gone since the beginning of the war, while all the women go out to meet them in the square. It is one of the finest moments in any war film. The story is all about a church bell, missing when the major arrives to take charge of the village, while a clique of the villagers insist the return of the church bell being the most important need for the starving village, and the major goes through great pains to achieve that goal. The film ends in deep melancholy sadness but at the same time in glorious triumph. It's a great story, and no wonder the novel won the Pulitzer prize - Henry King's direction of the film goes meticulously about not missing anything of the great deserts of the novel.