Hacker Cinema
For Whom the Bell Tolls
1943 · Film · 170 min
Directed by Sam Wood
WarRomanceHistoryDramaAdventure
Spain in the 1930s is the place to be for a man of action like Robert Jordan. There is a civil war going on and Jordan—who has joined up on the side that appeals most to idealists of that era—has been given a high-risk assignment up in the mountains. He awaits the right time to blow up a crucial bridge in order to halt the enemy's progress.
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3 comments on Hacker News
Finished "For Whom the Bell Tolls" by Hemmingway
Wow, so powerful. So real. I can see why it won the accolades at the time and why it stays. The ending. You could see it a mile away, but it was so hurtful still.
Would love to see another adaptation made of it, especially nowadays. Maybe a really long movie, 2 parts?
The first English language film that comes to mind for the Spanish civil war is For Whom the Bell Tolls. It's been a while, but I don't think it has much discourse about the causes or the background for the war - but films often treat those subjects either as assumed background information the audience already has, or as something that is not needed to identify with the characters and enjoy the narrative.
So you could use it, but it would need to be accompanied by supplemental factual materials. But I think that is true of many, if not most, non-documentary popular war films.
The For Whom the Bell Tolls quote is a striking way to start the introduction. It makes the point of their inquiry much more obvious than the formal scientific language that follows. I'd love to see more of this ("real-world" connections, not movie quotes) in scientific writing.