‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’ (1943) is a magnificent classic of cinema starring Gary Cooper and Ingrid Bergman. The film, based on Ernest Hemingway’s famous 1940 novel of the same name, tells the story of Robert Jordan, a schoolteacher who joins the Republican forces during the Spanish Civil War. Assigned to blow up a bridge in the mountains to delay the Nationalist advance, the brave fighter, amid clashes, death, and chaos, finds true love.
To play the film’s protagonist, director Sam Wood chose the charismatic Gary Cooper (who was considerably older than the character in the novel), while the ethereal Ingrid Bergman portrayed María — a young woman whose parents were killed by Francoists and who becomes a leader of the resistance group. For the role, the Swedish actress unhesitatingly cut her hair short — an essential sacrifice. “I’m ready to cut off my head for this role!” she said. However, the filming was nearly derailed because of… a horse!
Indeed, at the end of the film, the horse ridden by Cooper was supposed to fall and break its leg. The problem was that the only horse capable of performing this delicate stunt that the crew managed to find was bay-colored, while the horse Cooper rode throughout the rest of the film was gray. At the time For Whom the Bell Tolls was filmed, digital retouching simply didn’t exist, so turning a bay horse into a gray one with a click was impossible.
Re-shooting all the earlier scenes with Cooper riding a bay horse was also out of the question. So, the crew came up with an effective solution—one that the audience would never notice: they simply painted the bay horse gray.
Read more: ‘The Way We Were’: Why Important Scenes Were Cut
Another interesting fact: For Whom the Bell Tolls exists in three versions with different running times. The original cut was 170 minutes long, but for re-release it was shortened by over half an hour. Later, much of the removed material was restored, bringing the length to 166 minutes.
