MR. VITTORIO DE SICA recently took a full page in
a Hollywood newspaper to pay a tribute to yet another film version of Hemingway's A Farewell to Arms. It is, he writes, 'a masterpiece. Jennifer Jones is revealed as one of the world's greatest actresses. For me, she is another Elconora Duse.' Duse retired from the stage when de Sica was seven years old: so presumably he is referring to her return to the stage after the First World War, when she was sixty-five and short of money; not an entirely happy come-back. Even so, I would have thought, she cannot have been quite as bad as this comparison implies. But Mr. de Sica must find it hard to be an objective critic. He appears himself in A Farewell to Arms; and Miss Jones is the wife of David Selznick, the producer of the film. Evidently Mr. de Sica has learned a lot since he made Bicycle Thieves.
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