The Sun Also Rises

source: The Sun Also Rises

All of the main characters in this film would have been better portrayed by the stars when they were 10 years younger, as they looked tired and far too old for the roles. Tyrone Power in the lead was well past his prime, overweight and balding, Ava Gardner (once Hollywood's most beautiful woman) looked a comical replica of her past beauty, while the less said of Errol Flynn's appearance the better. When a movie is as slow moving as this, it needs virile exciting players to bring it off. Ernest Hemingway would have had to be extremely disappointed with the version turned out by Darryl F. Zanuck, - some of the supporting actors like Robert Evans (who went on to head up Paramount Pictures), Gregory Ratoff ( a better Director than Actor) and Juliet Greco (Zanuck's lady love) were all fairly ordinary in this painfully slow "epic". My final wish is that Tyrone Power fans do not remember him for this Movie, but rather for "THe Mark of Zorro", "The Black Swan", etc type roles.

As many times as Hemingway has been brought to the screen and resulted in an only slightly better than mediocre result does help make this film the best along with "For Whom the Bells Toll." It is also one of the finest of the first batch of wide screen films, as Hollywood was using the medium to lure people away from their TV sets and came up with mostly potboilers. The time frame is compromised considering the Lost Generation was directly after World War I and the cast is rather long in the tooth. It did accentuate that the partying life in postwar Europe was dissipating, to say the least! But if you can ignore that, there are fine dramatic moments with good dialogue writing. A lot has been said about Errol Flynn's performance, but in reality he is just playing himself. Power turns in one of the better performances of his career and conveyed the bitterness and disenchantment with his involvement in the hedonistic carrying on by his peers. His physical condition is one of the revelations of the story and I can't fathom why reviewers want to reveal it. Ava Gardner and the rest of the cast are well directed by Henry King who at least got to the essence of the book and handles the interaction of the characters quite well. I saw it originally in the CinemaScope theater version and the impact of the cinematography is muted by shrinking it down to a TV size screen. Especially the scenes in Madrid at the bullfight (Mexico City sits in for Madrid). Try for a wide screen version on AMC or on DVD and hopefully view it on a large screen TV.

This is a riveting film. The story is a classic, and the acting generally good, with Errol Flynn brilliant. It is also a memorable spectacle, with great use of colour. Tyrone Power's Jake is too old, too stodgy, too obtuse--but this is a minor irritation. On the whole, two hours of great entertainment.

It was great to see 2 of Hollywood's film idols on a film together. Tyrone did look tired in this movie. Errol and Eddie Albert as two drunks were very funny. Tyrone, as always, was great as a jaded WWI veteran. Ava Gardner was also very interesting to watch and I thought she played her character very well. The bullfighting was very graphic for its time, however, the actor who played the bullfighter couldn't act.

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.

Tyrone Power was the quintessential choice for the Jake Barnes role. Ava Gardner was superb as the modern day Aphrodite. Errol Flynn and Eddie Albert were charming and added just the right amount of comic relief along with being terrific as the supporting cast. Mel Ferrer added to the opposite end of the spectrum. His dramatic scenes gave us the reality check needed to keep the movie from going to far in one direction. The background scenes were absolutely beatiful! Paris, Spain, the bull fights! Finally the movie shows just how post-war people can lose direction in their lives while looking for love in all the wrong places. This was story telling at it's best!

This was made in 1957, when Ty Power was 43, and getting a bit dull and paunchy. The whole cast was a mite ripe for the film. If the same cast had made it ten years earlier, it would have been a real treat. Problem is, in 1947, none of that cast had put themselves through enough agony to convey the world-weariness of Hemingway's 20-something crew. Power was still a one dimensional pretty boy, although morphing into a real actor with films like Razor's Edge and Nightmare Alley; Ava Gardner was a slick chick on the MGM lot who had been married to Mickey Rooney, but otherwise didn't have a lot of movie experience. Errol Flynn was deteriorating noticeably, but hadn't acquired the self-knowledge he demonstrated in The Sun Also Rises. If the Cast of '57 could have conveyed their panache in '47, it might have worked really well. As it is, only Flynn really rises to the occasion. Ironically, he steals the film in a distinctly supporting role. He is the only one who captures the tragedy of a misspent life - the others just seem cranky and self indulgent.

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!

There's no other way to describe this other than a major disappointment. On paper it was a great opportunity to finally do right by Hemingway - something that still eludes filmmakers - his first real novel (he had published The Torrents Of Spring, a parody, earlier), an immediate best seller chock full of interesting characters and set against a backdrop of Paris and Pamplona (all Hemingway's novels were set outside the USA, Italy twice, Spain twice, Havana, Paris, the Gulf Stream)all one had to do was acquire the rights, commission a screenplay and assemble the right cast. Aye, there's the rub; where Hemingway's characters were lost youths who had been fighting a war less than a decade before the events described in the novel Fox in their wisdom assembled an over-the-hill gang all, with the exception of Mel Ferrer, possessing fine acting chops but badly in need of a touch of jeunnesse. As drop-dead gorgeous actresses go Ava Gardner turned out consistently fine performances and does so here but only Errol Flynn rings completely true as Mike Campbell and even he is clearly too old for the part. Robert Evans demonstrates why he soon gave up acting - though surely it was vice versa - and is so bad he makes Mel Ferrer look good. Altogether a sad treatment of a landmark, albeit now dated, novel.