Search - Hemingway on DVD

Champ writer trying to live the good life

Bruce P. Barten | Saint Paul, MN United States | 12/24/2004

(5 out of 5 stars)

"I previously had no reason to worry about who or how many women Hemingway might be married to. Even Dorothy Parker was married a few times, and she wrote for `The New Yorker' when she was lucky, but she was unlucky enough to get married when husbands were going to war. Dorothy Parker was most unpopular during World War II for complaining that by the time her husband came home, he was sure to be somebody else. Hemingway never made it all seem as funny as Dorothy Parker usually was, but John Dos Passos was pretty funny when he said, "Every time Hemingway writes a new book, he needs a new wife." If that seems strange to you, you definitely need to see this five hour feature on two DVD discs. The four main female roles are all wives, and the young woman who has a major role in the final novel before THE OLD MAN AND THE SEA does not even get to be more than a companion on a sightseeing expedition in Italy (the book flopped).

Paris, Spain, Africa, Key West, Cuba, some mountain in the Alps; this DVD has great scenery and several wars. There are also a lot of newspaper reporters, who sometimes get into arguments. In Madrid during the Spanish Civil War the reporters called each others' stories propaganda, but the secret police who were arresting people on the streets might have been shooting them without having a secret military tribunal first, and the guy from Pravda who talked to Stalin on the phone every night never revealed what Stalin said. Hemingway could usually get into arguments staying at home, or going out in his boat, or wanting to spend a few more hours in a bar before he went home for the night.

If you remember Liza Minelli teaching a little English to Marisa Berenson in the movie `Caberet' (I've been . . . How do they say it in German?), you should see Marisa Berenson dominating Hemingway as his second wife in this romp. I am giving away too much plot: there are so many women sitting around a table or hooking up with Gertrude Stein in Paris that you shouldn't expect a young married writer like Hemingway to start falling for them. My favorite line is Hemingway telling her "Rich girls know how to drive up the cost." Marisa Berenson plays a rich `Vogue' fashion writer, and if you watch this DVD expecting Hemingway to tell her that, it will help you figure out Hemingway, too. Eventually you will not be disappointed.

Hemingway has to write what's true, but he wants his writing to make him happy. Being happy as the most famous character on Key West gets pretty crazy. With a movie this long, it seems that he lasted a long time before seeking psychiatric help and having a doctor tell him, "Promise me you won't commit suicide if I let you go home."

It is not unusual for authors whose books I enjoy to kill themselves, and some of the suspense is seeing how often it can be avoided before it happens. The end of this, with Hemingway worrying in 1961 that he has kissed the Cuban flag and donated the Nobel Prize for literature to Cuba, shows how far a man with five concussions and a history of heavy drinking can sink. In many of the movies that I like, the worst parts are the things that are true, and the end of this one is an expectation fulfilled."