Taglines: In war they found each other…In each other they found love…
In Love and War movie storyline. Like Richard Attenborough’s last film, the acclaimed Shadowlands, In Love and War is a real-life love story with a famous author at its center. But where Shadowlands was a September song of love in late middle age, In Love and War is a story of young love set among the ruins of a world at war. It is also the first of Attenborough’s films to focus on a woman — the courageous Agnes von Kurowsky — whose love for Ernest Hemingway, a boy not yet out of his teens, is at odds not only with society’s rules, but with the senseless butchery going on around them.
Sandra Bullock, fresh from the triumphs of Speed, While You Were Sleeping and A Time to Kill, plays von Kurowsky, the nurse who became the inspiration for one of the great heroines of English literature, Catherine Barkley in A Farewell to Arms. Chris O’Donnell follows noteworthy performances in Scent of a Woman, Circle of Friends and Batman Forever with his role as the young, aspiring novelist, questing for adventure and passionately pursuing the woman who was the greatest love of his life.
For both Bullock and O’Donnell, working with Richard Attenborough was an opportunity to stretch their acting muscles under the tutelage of a true master. Best known for his multi-Oscar-winning epic Gandhi, Attenborough is first and foremost an actor’s director who has launched the careers of such young talents as Anthony Hopkins, Ben Kingsley and Denzel Washington and guided Robert Downey Jr., to an Academy Award nomination for Chaplin.
Based on Hemingway In Love And War: The Lost Diary of Agnes Von Kurowsky, In Love and War is a story of desperate love set against the bleak landscape of battlefield tragedy. During World War I, idealistic young Americans anxious not to miss the fight, too young or unfit to enlist in the armed forces, served as they could. All over Europe, American Red Cross hospitals staffed by volunteers did their best to restore war-torn bodies.
Into the maelstrom that was Italy in the summer of 1918 arrives cub reporter Ernest Hemingway, a good-looking teenager who is determined to enter the war to end all wars by any means necessary. Hemingway joins other young Americans driving ambulances and handing out chocolate, coffee and cigarettes, but is frustrated to find he is far from the action — the front lines.
Also among the Red Cross volunteers working in northern Italy as the combat enters its final phase are Agnes von Kurowsky and her colleagues Mac (Ingrid Lacey), Rosie (Margot Steinberg), Theresa (Laura Nardi), Dottie (Diane Witter) and Cavie (Allegra di Carpegna). Indispensable to the war effort, these battle-hardened nurses are led by the formidable Katherine de Long (Tara Hugo), who keeps the women under her wing and maintains strict discipline.
In Love and War is a 1996 romantic drama film based on the book, Hemingway in Love and War by Henry S. Villard and James Nagel. The film stars Sandra Bullock, Chris O’Donnell, Mackenzie Astin, and Margot Steinberg. Its action takes place during the First World War and is based on the wartime experiences of the writer Ernest Hemingway. It was directed by Richard Attenborough. The film was entered into the 47th Berlin International Film Festival.
This film is largely based on Hemingway’s real-life experiences in the First World War as a young ambulance-driver in Italy. He was wounded and sent to a military hospital, where he shared a room with Villard (who later wrote the book the movie is based on) and they were nursed by Agnes von Kurowsky. Hemingway and Kurowsky fell strongly in love, but somehow the relationship didn’t work out.
The film—apparently in a deliberate attempt to capture what the director called Hemingway’s “emotional intensity”—takes liberties with the facts. In real life, unlike the movie, the relationship was probably never consummated, and the couple did not meet again after Hemingway left Italy.
In Love and War (1996)
Directed by: Richard Attenborough
Starring: Sandra Bullock, Chris O’Donnell, Mackenzie Astin, Margot Steinberg, Alan Bennett, Ingrid Lacey, Tara Hugo, Carlo Croccolo, Diane Witter, Tracy Hostmyer
Screenplay by: Henry S. Villard, James Nagel, Allan Scott, Dimitri Villard, Clancy Sigal, Anna Hamilton Phelan
Production Design by: Stuart Craig
Cinematography by: Roger Pratt
Film Editing by: Lesley Walker
Costume Design by: Penny Rose
Set Decoration by: Stephenie McMillan
Art Direction by: John King, Michael Lamont, Neil Lamont
Music by: George Fenton
MPAA Rating: PG-13 for graphic war injuries and some sensuality.
Distributed by: New Line Cinema
Release Date: December 18, 1996
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