A Farewell to Arms is a 1932 American pre-Code melodrama film[3] directed by Frank Borzage and starring Helen Hayes, Gary Cooper and Adolphe Menjou.

[4] Based on the 1929 semi-autobiographical novel A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway, with a screenplay by Oliver H. P. Garrett and Benjamin Glazer, the film is about a tragic romantic love affair between an American ambulance driver and an English nurse in Italy during World War I.

The film received Academy Awards for Best Cinematography and Best Sound and was nominated for Best Picture and Best Art Direction.

The original Broadway play starred Glenn Anders and Elissa Landi and was staged at the National Theatre from September 22, 1930, to October 1930.

Frederic meets English Red Cross nurse Catherine Barkley in a dark stairway.

The film was released in multiple versions with different endings, one with Catherine's death, one in which she lives and another in which her fate is ambiguous.

However, a nitrate print was located in the David O. Selznick vaults and the uncut film was released on DVD in 1999 by Image Entertainment.

[11] The film's soundtrack includes selections from the Wagner operas Tristan und Isolde ("Liebestod"), Das Rheingold and Siegfried, as well as the storm passage from Tchaikovsky's symphonic poem Francesca da Rimini.

In a contemporary review for The New York Times, critic Mordaunt Hall wrote:Bravely as it is produced for the most part, there is too much sentiment and not enough strength in the pictorial conception of Ernest Hemingway's novel ...

Notwithstanding the undeniable artistry of the photography, the fine recording of voices and Frank Borzage's occasional excellent directorial ideas, one misses the author's vivid descriptions and the telling dialogue ...

To be true it was an extremely difficult task to tackle, a rather hopeless one in fact, considering that the story is told in the first person.

[13]Mae Tinée of the Chicago Tribune wrote: "'A Farewell to Arms' is rich with all the attributes that make for a completely satisfying screen play.