Film

In Love and War

A 1996 period romance following young Ernest Hemingway's recovery from a WWI wound and his passionate affair with an American nurse in Italy. Lush, earnest, and surprisingly tender—more interested in the vulnerability of first love than in the literary giant Hemingway would become. For viewers drawn to intimate historical dramas with real emotional stakes.

TMDb rating3.0

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you like wartime love stories told with a patient, sun-warmed eye for the small gestures between two people who are not yet sure what they feel, and you don't mind a romance that plays out more like a long letter than a fireworks show.

Skip it if you want the war itself to drive the story, since the front lines stay offscreen and the mood is more lovelorn and wistful than gripping, and a slower pace may feel like waiting.

What it asks of you: Settle in for a little under two hours of unhurried scenes, with long stretches of hospital corridors, rooftop talks and quiet hesitation before anything tips over into feeling.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

The English Patient1996

A sweeping WWII romance told through flashbacks, similarly building intimacy across borders and wartime separation. Visually sumptuous and committed entirely to the intensity of forbidden love.

But Nearly three and a half hours of yearning can feel glacial if you need plot momentum rather than atmosphere.

The English Patient poster

Atonement2007

A young woman's misguided accusation reshapes lives and love across decades. Like In Love and War, it's about how a single moment can define a life, told with elegant precision and genuine heartbreak.

But The tonal shift in the final act divides viewers; some find it devastating, others feel manipulated.

Atonement poster

A Farewell to Arms1957

Based on Hemingway's own WWI novel (inspired by his experience with Agnes). Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones bring quiet intensity to a similar story of love amid chaos and separation.

But The 1957 production values and pacing feel deliberate rather than romantic to modern eyes.

A Farewell to Arms poster

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from In Love and War

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Sun Also Rises1957

Hemingway examining himself: the earlier film shows his first love wound; this shows the emotional scar tissue that shaped his fiction and his life.

Hemingway's own novel adapted with Tyrone Power and Ava Gardner, following the Lost Generation in 1920s Paris after WWI. Where In Love and War shows Hemingway becoming a writer, this shows the writer he became—the same restless, damaged sensibility.

But The misogyny of the source material translates directly; Ava Gardner's character exists primarily as the object of male desire and anguish.

The Sun Also Rises poster
More like this (8)

The Notebook2004

An older man reads to his wife in a nursing home; the story is their impossible love during the Depression. Achingly sincere about how love shapes a life, even when circumstances demand sacrifice.

But If you're allergic to sentiment, the frame story and emotional directness will feel cloying.

The Notebook poster

Cold Mountain2003

A soldier wounded in the Civil War tries to return home to the woman he loves. Epic in scope but intimate in focus—Jude Law and Nicole Kidman capture longing with real restraint.

But Nearly three hours of beautiful people being miserable can feel self-indulgent without the emotional resolution some need.

Cold Mountain poster

Bright Star2009

Jane Campion's film about John Keats and Fanny Brawne is delicate and sensual—two people discovering love through words, separated by circumstance and mortality. Visually exquisite.

But Slow, literary, and deliberately restrained. If you need action or conventional romance beats, this will frustrate you.

Bright Star poster

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society2018

Post-WWII romance between a writer and an island resident. Gentle and genuine, with the same sense that love can be quiet and grounded even when the world around it has been at war.

But The cozy tone and small-scale stakes feel slight compared to the historical weight of the setting.

The Guernsey Literary & Potato Peel Pie Society poster

Across the Universe2007

A young American and an upper-class British student fall in love during the Vietnam War. Visually ambitious and genuinely moving about love as a counterforce to violence.

But The ambitious musical numbers can overwhelm the intimate romantic core for viewers seeking subtlety.

Across the Universe poster

Far from the Madding Crowd2015

Carey Mulligan navigates love with three different men across seasons and hardship. Like In Love and War, it understands that first love isn't always the love that lasts, and that's okay.

But Rural melodrama set in the 1870s moves at a deliberate pace; some will find it beautiful, others slow.

Far from the Madding Crowd poster

Regeneration1997

Both are hospital-set dramas about how injury—physical or psychological—can crack a person open and create unexpected connection. Both suggest that the relationships formed in recovery shape us as much as the wounds themselves.

Set in a Scottish hospital where a doctor treats shell-shocked soldiers, including Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon. Like In Love and War, it's about vulnerability and survival amid war's aftermath—but it centers recovery and the bonds between men rather than romance.

But Slower and smaller in scale than expected; the intimacy is psychological rather than romantic, which some find less engaging.

Regeneration poster

The Remains of the Day1993

Both explore how a single romance—answered or unanswered—becomes the hinge upon which a life turns. Both suggest that love is not always a happy ending; sometimes it's the question we never stop asking.

Anthony Hopkins as a butler reflecting on a lifetime of repressed feelings for his housekeeper. No explosiveness, no affair—just the accumulated weight of a love never spoken. Devastatingly quiet about what we sacrifice and why.

But It's a film about regret and restraint with almost no catharsis. If you need emotional resolution, this ending will ache in the wrong way.

The Remains of the Day poster

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Recommended by

Dear John, Unbroken, A Farewell to Arms, Palm Trees in the Snow, The Poet