--- title: "For Whom the Bell Tolls" year: 1943 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/for-whom-the-bell-tolls" fi1m_score: 58 critics_score: 54 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-20T00:59:59.206703+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T01:00:33.024775+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # For Whom the Bell Tolls (1943) Directed by Sam Wood · 2h 50m · MPA G · War, Romance, History, Drama, Adventure **Fi1m score: 58** · Critics 54 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* Gary Cooper takes three days to blow up a bridge and the film takes nearly three hours to let him > Sam Wood’s Hemingway is handsome, respectful and nearly three hours long. Katina Paxinou’s Pilar is the reason to sit through it; the love scenes between Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman are the reason sitting through it is work. ## Synopsis Spain, 1937, in the mountains behind the Fascist lines. Robert Jordan (Gary Cooper), an American fighting for the Republic and an expert with dynamite, is ordered to destroy a bridge in a gorge at the hour a Republican offensive begins. The old man Anselmo (Vladimir Sokoloff) leads him to a band of guerrillas living in a cave: their leader Pablo (Akim Tamiroff), grown fond of his horses and wary of dying; Pablo’s woman Pilar (Katina Paxinou), who is neither; and, with her hair cropped close, Maria (Ingrid Bergman), rescued from a Fascist train. Jordan has three days to study the bridge, count the sentries and persuade Pablo to help him, and Pablo does not want to. ## Review Sam Wood’s film of Ernest Hemingway’s 1940 novel runs 170 minutes, and what happens in them can be put in a sentence. An American with a rucksack of dynamite, Robert Jordan (Gary Cooper), is sent into the Spanish mountains to blow a bridge, and spends three days in a cave with the guerrillas who are supposed to help him. Hemingway made those three days feel like a whole life. Dudley Nichols’s screenplay makes them feel like three days, with a fourth thrown in. What is good here is good from the start, and most of it is Katina Paxinou. Her Pilar runs the band while Pablo (Akim Tamiroff) drinks and sulks, and Paxinou plays her big, coarse and unafraid, a woman who announces that she was born ugly and dares anyone to argue. Early on she reads Jordan’s palm, sees something, and closes her hand on it without a word. We were more disturbed by that than by anything the film later does with a rifle. Tamiroff is her match, sly and frightened, a man who has stopped believing in the war and knows exactly how that looks to the others. Whenever the two of them are quarrelling by the fire, the film is alive. Cooper does what Cooper does. He says little, looks tired and handles a rifle as if he grew up with it, and that suits Jordan up to a point. The point is the love story. Ingrid Bergman plays Maria with her hair cropped short and a plainness the rest of the film could use; the scene in which she asks where the noses go when two people kiss is the one everybody remembers, and she earns it. But Nichols gives the lovers speech after speech about what they are to each other, Wood lays them in the heather with the light going gold, and Victor Young’s strings come up under every one. We were bored by the third of these scenes, and by the fifth we were irritated, because we could see the picture stopping to admire itself. Ray Rennahan shoots the mountains in Technicolor and they look like a poster for a holiday in Spain, which is to say handsome and not at all like a place where people are being killed. William Cameron Menzies’s cave is broad, dry and well lit, and nobody in it ever looks cold or hungry. This is a war with the mud left out. John F. Link Sr. and Sherman Todd cut cleanly when there is something to cut, and a night reconnaissance and a fight on a bare hilltop in the second half show what the film might have been had it trusted movement over talk. Both are over quickly. The talk is not. Nichols keeps the politics to a murmur. The men in the cave are fighting Fascists, and the word is used, but what the Republic was and why an American would cross an ocean for it is left to Cooper’s face to explain, and Cooper’s face was never much of a talker. Hemingway’s book is about a man weighing a cause he has begun to doubt against a woman he has just met. The film is about a man who would like to get back to his girl. That is a smaller story, and it is told at greater length. The publicity of the day promised something thunderous, tender and touching. It manages tender, in Bergman, and thunderous at intervals, and Paxinou supplies the touching more or less on her own. Most critics have split down the middle over it, and we think the split is the honest response to a big, careful, expensive picture that runs an hour longer than its story needs. See it for Pilar and Pablo, and for the hilltop. At home the mountains shrink and the speeches do not, so keep something to hand, and note that the film reaches a natural pause about halfway; take it. *Fi1m score 58, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say The reviews split evenly, two positive, two mixed and two negative, but they agree on where the merit lies. Nearly every critic singles out Katina Paxinou’s supporting performance as the film’s strongest element, and most find Ingrid Bergman’s Maria natural and affecting, with Gary Cooper judged a solid if unremarkable Hemingway hero. The Technicolor mountain scenery is admired even by those who dislike everything else. The reservations cluster around length and handling. The nearly three-hour running time is called exhausting and too faithful to the novel’s less cinematic passages, and several critics feel Sam Wood treats the material too gingerly, flattening its passion into melodrama and picture-postcard prettiness. The spread is wide and follows the calendar: the contemporary notices in The New York Times and Variety are the warmest, ranking it among the important pictures of its year, while later assessments cool sharply, with Eye for Film dismissing it as polished but boring. ### Reviews we read (6) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (75/100, inferred): The critic finds it the best film of the year, full of vitality with a standout climax, and praises the characterizations (especially Katina Paxinou) along with the script and direction's intimacy. However, it is criticized for excessive length that makes it exhausting and for over-fidelity to the novel's less cinematic elements. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1943/07/15/archives/the-screen-in-review-for-whom-the-bell-tolls-a-drama-from-the.html) - **Variety**, Variety Staff (70/100, inferred): It is deemed one of the important pictures of all time on a beautiful Technicolor canvas with a compelling romance, and the supporting performances (especially Katina Paxinou) are highlighted as a triumph. The main complaint is that the nearly three-hour running time overdoes a good thing by focusing too much on one episode. [Read](https://variety.com/1942/film/reviews/for-whom-the-bell-tolls-1200414127/) - **Empire**, David Parkinson (60/100, inferred): The review recounts the film's production history and notes its mixed critical reception at the time, with complaints about excessive length and melodramatic love scenes. It praises Ingrid Bergman's naturalistic performance as Maria and the grit provided by supporting players like Katina Paxinou. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/bell-tolls-review/) - **Time Out**, TCh (50/100, inferred): One of Paramount's prestige pictures of 1943 with strong performances from Gary Cooper as a robust Hemingway hero and Ingrid Bergman, plus an Oscar-winning supporting turn by Katina Paxinou. However, it is dramatically messy, with Sam Wood handling the material too gingerly compared to Hemingway's raw style. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/for-whom-the-bell-tolls) - **Sight and Sound** (40/100, inferred): The film follows the Hemingway novel superficially but loses its depth and passion, turning it into picture-postcard flatness and melodrama. It praises the magnificent mountain scenery and standout performances by Ingrid Bergman and Katina Paxinou. [Read](http://old.bfi.org.uk/features/ultimatefilm/chart/details.php?ranking=58) - **Eye for Film**, Themroc (20/100, inferred): The critic finds the narrative clumsy and disjointed with inconsistent pacing and scenes that drag, failing to capture the novel's passion. They single out the Technicolor photography as looking nice but overall deem it a polished but boring film. [Read](https://www.eyeforfilm.co.uk/review/for-whom-the-bell-tolls-film-review-by-themroc) ## Details - **Director:** Sam Wood - **Director:** Sam Wood - **Screenplay:** Dudley Nichols - **Novel:** Ernest Hemingway - **Cinematography:** Ray Rennahan - **Editor:** Sherman Todd, John F. Link Sr. - **Music:** Victor Young - **Production design:** William Cameron Menzies - **Producer:** Sam Wood - **Cast:** Gary Cooper as Robert Jordan; Ingrid Bergman as Maria; Akim Tamiroff as Pablo; Arturo de Córdova as Agustín; Vladimir Sokoloff as Anselmo; Mikhail Rasumny as Rafael; Fortunio Bonanova as Fernando; Eric Feldary as Andres - **Runtime:** 2h 50m - **Certificate (MPA):** G - **Release (the US):** 13 July 1943 - **Genres:** War, Romance, History, Drama, Adventure - **Budget:** $3 million - **Box office:** $18 million ## Where to watch in the US Not streaming, renting or buying in the US at the last check. Also available in: AU, BR, CA, GB, IE, IN, IT, JP, NZ. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1944: Best Actor (nominated); Best Actress (nominated); Best Art Direction, Color (nominated); Best Cinematography, Color (nominated); Best Film Editing (nominated); Best Original Dramatic or Comedy Score (nominated); Best Picture (nominated); Best Supporting Actor (nominated); Best Supporting Actress (won) ## If you liked this - *Land and Freedom* (1995), Fi1m 83: Ken Loach’s Spanish Civil War, with the politics the 1943 film left out. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/land-and-freedom.md) - *The Devil's Backbone* (2001): Guillermo del Toro’s orphanage ghost story, the same war seen from a child’s bed. - *The Killers* (1946): Hemingway on screen done short and sharp, which is how he wrote. - *The Spanish Earth* (1937): Joris Ivens’s documentary from the front, narrated by Hemingway, before the novel. - *Butterfly's Tongue* (1999): A Galician boy, his schoolmaster and the summer the war arrives; quiet and hard. --- © Fi1m Ltd. 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