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I watched the 1957 film version of The Sun Also Rises last night and this
morning, and I made some notes. I haven't read the book in at least two years, but I remember it pretty well. My mentor at Bethany is one of the most important Hemingway scholars in the world [and that's awesome!].

The opening explains too much. There's also a stupid flashback scene that explains everything about Jake's condition.

On the whole, the actors are very old for their characters, which is really disappointing. Tyrone Power acts more like a news anchor than the complex, torn Jake Barnes. There is no desperation to give life to the tense love between Jake and Brett. Robert Cohn (Mel Ferrer) is not enough of a mild pussy. The characters often feel old and weary, not disillusioned youth. The Lost Generation [which, in the novel, does not include all of the characters], scarred and jaded though they may be, still have a vibrancy about them.

However, Ava Gardner, though she was a glamorous Hollywood starlet, is a very good Brett Ashley.

The close-up shots in the bullfighting scenes are so obviously fake, due to the lack of special effects and to protect Robert Evens from injury, that the film would be better without them. They waste time.

Everyone's hair is really, really shiny, which is kinda irrelevant. And the punches are limp.

There is no urgency in Jake's decision that, in the novel, causes him to sacrifice his aficionado status to make Brett happy. In the film, he does not forfeit it at all. He does not lose something so prized for the sake of possibly making Brett happy. The film cheapens the scene.

You can't include every detail when translating the novel into film, but there are scenes missing that really add depth and tone and empathy.

In Jake's scenes with Georgette, it is not clear that she is a working girl, and the character is given a little too much screen time. In an intervening scene, when Brett enters the Bal Musette, it is not at all clear that she is with a group of homosexuals.

The fishing scenes lack beauty and serenity. They are just there.

The "rotten," "technical" Catholic theme is absent from Jake's character. The god-versus-man overtones are lost. He does not go swimming near the end of the story, a cleansing and rebirth that enhances the final line of the novel.

The film ends with Jake and Brett riding in the back of a cab, but the final line of the novel had been moved to the previous scene in a hotel room. And they are not drinking; Jake is stone sober, and the effect is really lukewarm.

The ending is sort of vague, which is fitting, but it loses so much by moving Jake's final line. You just don't care what happens to Jake and Brett.



It was, however, much better than A Farewell to Arms, starring Rock Hudson, which was even worse because A Farewell to Arms is my favorite Hemingway novel.