Based on the book, Hemingway in Love and War by Henry S. Villard and James Nagel, In Love and War stars Sandra Bullock, Chris O’Donnell, Mackenzie Astin, and Margot Steinberg.
| In Love and War |  |
|---|
Directed by Richard Attenborough, the tale is set during the First World War and is based on the wartime experiences of the writer Ernest Hemingway.
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.
Hemingway, deeply affected by his romantic relationship with Kurowsky, later wrote several stories about it, including his 1929 novel A Farewell to Arms, which would be made into a movie in 1932, starring Gary Cooper and Helen Hughes
