Synopsis

During World War I, young American ambulance driver Ernest Hemingway is badly wounded while serving in Italy. At a military hospital, he falls in love with Agnes von Kurowsky, the nurse caring for him. Their intense romance shapes Hemingway's emotional life and later writing, but the pressures of war, their age difference, and Agnes' eventual decision to end the relationship make their future together impossible.

Factoids & Trivia

• The film is based on Hemingway in Love and War: The Lost Diary of Agnes von Kurowsky, Her Letters and Correspondence of Ernest Hemingway, a 1989 book edited by Henry S. Villard and James Nagel.

• Henry Villard, who appears in the story as a young hospital patient, was the father of producer Dimitri Villard. Dimitri Villard helped bring the film project to the screen and arranged for Mackenzie Astin to play his father.

• Agnes von Kurowsky is widely regarded as the real-life inspiration for Catherine Barkley in Hemingway's novel A Farewell to Arms.

• The movie takes deliberate dramatic liberties with the historical romance. Agnes later denied that she and Hemingway had a sexual relationship, while the film presents their connection as a consummated love affair.

• Hemingway and von Kurowsky never met again after their time in Italy. Von Kurowsky died in 1984.

• Production used locations in Italy and Quebec, including Vittorio Veneto, Bassano del Grappa, Venice, Montreal, Montebello, and Sherbrooke.

• Several soldiers seen in the Italian battle scenes were volunteers from the nearby Aviano Air Base.

• Sandra Bullock researched Agnes von Kurowsky by consulting Agnes' wartime diaries and the surviving love letters exchanged with Hemingway.

• The film had its Los Angeles opening on December 18, 1996, followed by a New York opening in January 1997. It was also shown at the 47th Berlin International Film Festival.