tonyirwin-58946
It would be easy to pass off Force of Arms as just another post-WWII action/romance movie until you're a few frames into viewing it. Surprisingly realistic with actual combat footage interspersed with filming. Strong yet sensitively-understated performances by Holden, Olson, and, in a supporting role, Frank Lovejoy. An inspired and superior script helps convey the chaos of combat, its effects on those who are scarred by it, and the powerful force of love that can somehow emerge in the midst of the sheer will to survive. A classic that feels as real in 2017 as when it was filmed.
Hunt2546
Just caught it on Turner. The reviews calling it "routine" show how dull-normal some people are. In fact, the old pro Michael Curtiz (look him up) brings an extraordinary sensibility to the film. Gone are his romantic stylings of Casablanca and Robin Hood, his lush, overdone Warner's agreeable foolishness. Instead, he portrays war as bitter and without glory, full of random death and meaningless violence. The three combat sequences are superb, and Holden, as he would later demonstrate in "Bridge on the River K" is brilliant as a reluctant soldier who has no sense of glory and no wish to be a hero, but is nevertheless the everyman Infantryman, who knows he must do his duty. Curtiz doesn't turn this evocation of battle into boy's fantasy; it's hard, bitter, terrifying and brutally unfair to children and especially young American men who never thought they'd be dying in the slopes of Mt. Casino. The romance is nicely done, even if the ending is trite (but, in the way that cheap melody can be, amazingly satisfying). Olsen and Holden have great chem (as they proved in three other films as well) and all in all, the whole piece is kept in a register of near-realism that's very affecting. A neglected minor gem from the great Curtiz.
bkoganbing
The original story behind Force of Arms was written by Richard Tregaskis, war correspondent from World War II, best known for Guadalcanal Diary. Of course some would argue that Tregaskis borrowed a lot of the plot from the previous war that Ernest Hemingway chronicled in A Farewell to Arms. Still it's a nice romantic story brought to life by the teaming of William Holden and Nancy Olson who did four films together back at this time. Nancy Olson in fact got an Oscar nomination in the Best Supporting Actress category for Sunset Boulevard which was their first film together. After his company is relieved on the San Pietro front in the Italian theater, William Holden meets WAC Nancy Olson and a romance blooms. But it's back to the front, in fact Holden gets himself wounded twice during the course of Force of Arms.Actual combat footage from the Italian campaign is used along with newsreels from the liberation of Rome where the climax takes place. There are good performances here also by Frank Lovejoy and Katherine Warren as the respective commanding officers of Holden and Olson.This was Bill Holden's first great romantic role along the lines of Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca. It's a harbinger of what we would later get from him in films like The Bridges of Toko-Ri and Love Is A Many Splendored Thing.It's a sadly neglected film, one of Bill Holden's better films and should not be missed.
dinky-4
Some have called this an updated version of "A Farewell to Arms," but if the time has been moved forward from World War I Italy to World War II Italy, the quality has also been moved down from "memorable" to "routine." There's really nothing much wrong with this production but there's little to distinguish it, either, and one sometimes gets the uncomfortable feeling that the death and destruction of the greatest war in human history is simply being used as the background for yet another boy-meets-girl story.William Holden has a shower scene which shows he was still, at this point in his career, in his "hairy-chested" mode. Just a few years later, beginning with "Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing," he entered his "shaved chest" period.Dick Wesson supplies some "comic relief" which is just as grating as his work in "Destination Moon."
AD
