Bearing in mind that `In Love and War' is just not in the same league as that gigantic masterpiece `Gandhi' (1982) (qv), we can accept that his directing of this film is adequate. The film is not overly romantic and does not dwell too heavily on secondary matters.
Evidently here Chris O'Donnell enjoys a better coupling with Sandra Bullock than he does with Drew Barrymore in the recently seen `Mad Love' (1995) (qv). The chemistry between O'Donnell and Bullock seems to work here better, and thus makes this film just about acceptable viewing.
Based on Ernest Hemingway's experiences in Italy in World War I (see also `A Farewell to Arms') but here adapted with contributions by Henry Villard to whom the film is dedicated `in memoriam', one cannot help thinking that even an eighteen-year-old Hemingway was somewhat different in character to how he is portrayed here. Hemingway was an insufferable egoist, very macho, and largely unable to come to terms with himself, and so his honesty and sincerity simply vanished into a cloud of drink-laden macho expostulations. He never became a great writer. The only time we get close to anything authentic is in his short novel `The Snows of Kilimanjaro', where, using his experience of having had gangrene, he was able to tell a story which shed the veneer of bravura which Hemingway generally carried around with him as part of his well-travelled suitcase luggage. If you are into bullfighting, obviously his book `Death in the Afternoon' is obligatory reference, however dated it may be by now.
Oh, by the way, parts of this film were shot in Veneto, and thus in a few places where that great TV series of 1982 `Verdi' was also made.
Evidently here Chris O'Donnell enjoys a better coupling with Sandra Bullock than he does with Drew Barrymore in the recently seen `Mad Love' (1995) (qv). The chemistry between O'Donnell and Bullock seems to work here better, and thus makes this film just about acceptable viewing.
Based on Ernest Hemingway's experiences in Italy in World War I (see also `A Farewell to Arms') but here adapted with contributions by Henry Villard to whom the film is dedicated `in memoriam', one cannot help thinking that even an eighteen-year-old Hemingway was somewhat different in character to how he is portrayed here. Hemingway was an insufferable egoist, very macho, and largely unable to come to terms with himself, and so his honesty and sincerity simply vanished into a cloud of drink-laden macho expostulations. He never became a great writer. The only time we get close to anything authentic is in his short novel `The Snows of Kilimanjaro', where, using his experience of having had gangrene, he was able to tell a story which shed the veneer of bravura which Hemingway generally carried around with him as part of his well-travelled suitcase luggage. If you are into bullfighting, obviously his book `Death in the Afternoon' is obligatory reference, however dated it may be by now.
Oh, by the way, parts of this film were shot in Veneto, and thus in a few places where that great TV series of 1982 `Verdi' was also made.