Zwischen Madrid und Paris

In Hemingway's novel the characters are in their mid to late 20's with one in their mid 30's. The movie clearly has actors in their mid 30's to their 50s. They look like middle aged adolescents with too much money and time on their hands not a young post WWI generation.

Hemingway's great novel "The Sun Also Rises" has three layers to it. On the surface it is about the lives, adventures and falling out of a group of American and British expatriates in France and Spain after World War 1. At a second level there is a subtext running throughout the book about the search for meaning and authenticity in the aftermath of that horrendous war. And thirdly on a literary level there is the revolutionary style of Hemingway's spare prose where so often less is so much more. This film adaptation unfortunately only addresses the surface level – it is arguable whether any film adaptation could embrace all three. How does it rate on its limited scope? Only Errol Flynn as "Mike Campbell" captures the essence of the book character : bankrupt, dissolute, pathetic but still somehow endearing. His model in real life was dead within a decade. Tyrone Power as the protagonist "Jake Barnes" is stolid but unmemorable. Ava Gardner should be ideal as the reckless liberated 20's female "Brett Ashley" but the film fails to provide sufficient back story to explain her promiscuous dissolution and Gardner does not really convince in the role. Eddie Albert fails to project sufficiently the good-natured ebullience and intelligence of Jake's friend "Bill Gorton". Finally Mel Ferrer is merely adequate as "Robert Cohn" who triggers much of the falling out of the group in Spain. Overall this is a disappointing attempt to film what is probably an unfilmable novel. See it to watch Errol Flynn in one of his finest roles.

This is a depressing movie on several levels, the first being the actual story, about the "Lost Generation" after World War I hanging out in Europe and being drunk and/or unhappy and disillusioned.

For me it's one of those movies to watch when you really want to dwell on life's misery and wax philosophical and feel like there's something romantic about disenchantment.

The second depressing thing is the casting, which is a major problem. Tyrone Power had been the most important star at 20th Century Fox for many years - in fact, when he became a star in the late 1930s, each film he made was a bigger hit than the one before. He literally kept the studio solvent.

He was cast in this film at the age of 42 which was near the end of his life. He and the rest of the actors are all too old. I suppose to have made it with younger actors would have made it less of a big movie, but in fact, people like Jeffrey Hunter, Robert Wagner (both Fox actors) and Natalie Wood were closer to the right age. But you can see how that would have made it seem a lighter film.

In Power's case, I have read several comments here about how bad he looked. Were he alive, I'm sure he would thank you, as his fondest desire in life was to lose his looks. As far as he was concerned, his impossibly beautiful appearance wrecked his acting ambitions.

The funny part of it is, in candids taken during the filming, one of which is included in Mai Zetterling's All Those Tomorrows (she was his then girlfriend and on the set with him) he looks absolutely fantastic, healthy and tanned, not at all what is being described here.

He also had all his hair for those who seemed to think he was balding. His hair was downright luxuriant in Solomon and Sheba, the film he was making when he died. In fact, in photos taken one hour before he died, he looked better than he did in "The Sun Also Rises." Go figure.

Zetterling states that he reported to the set daily on 3 hours sleep and took pills to stay awake to attend social functions that he felt were necessary. He told Zetterling that he was pretty impressed with how bad Errol Flynn looked. Apparently he was envious.

Zetterling felt once filming started that he looked exhausted and haggard, but he didn't seem to care. Frankly, I thought he looked fine, particularly in the beginning of the movie. I think you can tell the scenes where he was running on no sleep.

And as far as looking bad, what about Ava Gardner? At 35, she was a mess. Someone in the comments said that with all these men chasing after Brett, people would think the war had made everyone's eyesight dim.

That's really not so - Gardner until the day she died had men falling for her right and left, including the husband of one interviewer who brought her flowers every day his wife spoke with Gardner. She was a very magnetic and sexy woman, and we can assume Brett Ashley had the same gifts.

That all being said, the ages are wrong but the acting is right, even if it comes not from disillusioned youth but disillusioned middle age. This is particularly true of Power as the impotent Jake Barnes and Gardner as Lady Ashley.

I would think as far as the emotions, the roles were very close to their own lives at that point. Power felt he had achieved nothing; he was supporting wives he no longer loved who lived in houses he paid for and would never enter, and he was only proud of a few films.

In the last years of his film-making, Tyrone Power turned in some wonderful performances in this movie, Abandon Ship, and Witness for the Prosecution. A shame he wasn't able to continue and do the sorts of roles he wanted.

Gardner's activities are well documented. She drank all night and slept all day and bullfighters were her thing, though "my man Frank" as she called him was always in the background.

Flynn and Eddie Albert are terrific - the dissipation was starting to pay off well for Errol Flynn, but unfortunately he wouldn't live long enough to make much money from it.

These two had the showiest roles - in fact, in a somewhat lifeless film, they lifted it up. Mel Ferrer's character wasn't sufficiently fleshed out to tell if he was doing a good job or not.

If you can put the ages aside, this is a good, not very good, and not great film - but great as far as production values and acting. Hemingway is very difficult to put on screen, as we all know from sitting through films based on his books and stories.

A final note: For those who didn't like Power's performance, consider Jake's wild enthusiasm over the bullfights. While Power was making Blood & Sand, he actually had to attend a bullfight.

Of course, a great deal was made of him and he was sitting with his wife, Annabella, down front and center. Unfortunately he became violently ill over the whole thing.

In order to leave with some dignity, Annabella said she was sick so they could get out of there. So give the man some credit - Jake sure did look like he was enjoying himself.

There are several films from the '40's to the '60's that I prefer to experience, rather than jump into Pauline Kael's skin. Let her successors dissect and occasionally say something of pith.

George Herbert said, "Time is the rider that breaks youth."

All the principal characters in this sad tale are broken. In their dissipation and aimless, joyless pursuits, they didn't stand for much of anything. It has been said that the cast was just too old for these roles. But they looked perfect for their roles, a group of people who were caught in a tepid tide pool, waiting to be washed out to sea. They were all tarnished goods.

I was especially impressed by Errol Flynn's performance. Of all of them, he was the most pitiful. Remember the song, "Tired of living and scared of dying?" That's him-a far cry from Captain Peter Blood.

Next is Robert Cohn (Mel Ferrer). He was a rich aimless child, eager to fasten himself to others, like a limpet. College had done nothing for him, except to make him an even greater useless snob. Then Lady Brett transformed him into a swine before casting him aside, because 'she couldn't stand his damned suffering.' After a crushing defeat at the hands of Brett and her bullfighter, he wisely headed home to Frances, if she would still have him.

Now we come to Jake and Lady Brett Ashley. These two truly loved one another, but in a very unhealthy way. She lost a husband to the Great War and never recovered. He gave "more then his life" to the war. His impotence was probably not the real reason Brett would not marry him, nor he, her. Damaged goods.

This film is excellent. Important, as is the book, emotional Tours De Force. Hemmingway is incredible.

THE SUN ALSO RISES was 20th Century Fox's big-budget 'prestige' film for 1957, based on one of Hemingway's best-known novels, shot on location in Paris and Mexico (substituting for Spain), and starring the studio's long-reigning superstar, Tyrone Power, surrounded by some of the screen's most legendary actors (Ava Gardner, Errol Flynn, Mel Ferrer, and Eddie Albert). With all the talent assembled in front of and behind the camera, producer Darryl F. Zanuck felt confident that the film would be an enduring classic for both his own independent company, and his studio.

It wasn't, unfortunately...

The problem with the film was a fundamental one; the 'Lost Generation' Hemingway wrote of were disillusioned young Americans, who, shattered by the horror and brutality of a meaningless 'Great War', lost their innocence, and became a 'live fast, die young' crowd of expatriates, settling in Paris. These were men and women in their twenties and thirties...yet the actors chosen to portray them were all ten to twenty years older! The most glaring example of this can be seen in the film's star, Tyrone Power. As newspaperman Jake Barnes, a vet whose war injuries render him impotent, unable to satisfy the woman he loves (Ava Gardner), and, therefore, the 'perfect' observer of his love's romantic entanglements with other men, Power seems more a victim of a midlife crisis than a young man devastated about losing his manhood. In his next-to-last film, Power, at 44, was aging badly, his hair thinning and his slender, 'movie idol' good looks surrendering to a middle-aged paunch. Only when he smiles do the years seem to lift, a bit, and a ghost of the "too handsome to be true" younger man appears. Adding to his physical deterioration was an undiagnosed heart condition, which would kill him, in less than two years.

His co-star, Ava Gardner, at 35, was going through a decline, as well, but, as with her character, Lady Brett Ashley, her vices were the cause of her self-destruction. Both Brett and Ava were hedonistic women too fond of booze, bullfighters, and nightlife, and in Ava's case, once-classic features were beginning to develop bags and wrinkles that makeup and lighting couldn't hide. Seeing Power, Mel Ferrer, Flynn, and young future film mogul Robert Evans (as a bullfighter), all lusting after her can lead a viewer to wonder if the War had impaired everyone's eyesight, as well as their judgment!

Coming off best are Errol Flynn and Eddie Albert. Flynn, at 48, long past his 'glamorous' prime (he and Power had been Hollywood's best-looking 'swashbucklers' of the early 40s), had become a very credible character actor, usually portraying variations of himself. His 'Mike Campbell', an alcoholic who is impoverished but still clinging to his pride, was, sadly, a dead-on assessment of Errol Flynn, as well. Like Power, he would be dead in two years, a victim of his own excesses. On the other hand, Eddie Albert, at 49, had long been health-conscious, and his performance as a drunk was simply good acting; paired with Flynn, they 'steal' the film, particularly during the famous Pamplona bull run, when the duo flee for their lives (while guzzling wine), and Flynn attempts to use a bad check as a cape to 'fight' a bull!

The drama seems overdrawn, the romance lacks 'fire', and the resolution is a hollow one. Even with the pretty scenery, Hugo Friedhofer's soaring film score, and Henry King's skill as a director, THE SUN ALSO RISES fails to generate more than a curiosity value, at the sight of so many actors, past their prime, trying to seem youthful and dynamic.

The studio just released the film on DVD; seeing photos of Power, Flynn, and Gardner between takes, and hearing director Henry King's audio reminiscences of the production are possibly more entertaining than the feature, itself!