Ernest Hemingway's 1939 novel, FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS, stands among the great pieces of American literature. Sam Wood's direction of the script by Dudley Nichols stars Gary Cooper as Hemingway's pain-ridden, love-torn hero, Robert Jordan, a Montana schoolteacher who risks his life to fight Franco's forces during the Spanish Civil War.

Jordan joins a group of Spanish guerrilla fighters whose mission is to blow up a bridge behind enemy lines. Ingrid Bergman plays Maria, a beautiful Spanish refugee who has been rendered mute by the trauma of a rape. Over the course of four days, Maria and Jordan fall head over heels in love, a plotline that subsumes the fighting and the war itself. Still, it is Katina Paxinou as Pilar, the hen mother of the guerrilla troop, who steals the show in her Oscar-winning performance.

FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS is not to be missed by any Hemingway fan.