Film

The Sun Also Rises

Name: The Sun Also Rises
Genre: Drama, Romance
Released: 1957
Cast: Tyrone Power, Ava Gardner, Errol Flynn, Eddie Albert, Mel Ferrer

Period drama

Hemingway's Lost Generation adrift in post-WWI Europe, chasing wine, bullfights, and love across France and Spain. This 1957 adaptation captures the aimless glamour and quiet desperation of people too damaged to settle down, too wealthy to stop. It's wistful, sophisticated, and occasionally cruel—for anyone drawn to beautiful people making beautiful mistakes.

TMDb rating

2.9

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a romance built from glances, drinking and things left unsaid, with the wandering Spanish fiesta scenes doing as much work as the dialogue.

Skip it if you need brisk plot and clear stakes, since much of this is people drifting between cafés and bars, talking in circles about their own restlessness.

What it asks of you: A patient, meandering shape at 130 minutes: the mood accumulates through talk, travel and long nights rather than through set-piece events, so it rewards sitting still.

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If you liked this

A Farewell to Arms1957

Another Hemingway adaptation from the same year, with Rock Hudson and Jennifer Jones. War, romance, and that same sense of passion colliding with futility. A more melodramatic take on similar emotional territory.

But The melodrama can feel overwrought compared to Hemingway's sparse prose. It's also very much a 1950s Hollywood romance, which softens the book's hard edges.

Sinners' Holiday1930

Early Warner Bros., rougher and more cynical about its bohemians than later Hollywood would allow. Captures that genuine Lost Generation disillusionment before it became a romantic pose.

But The print quality is compromised, and the acting style is very early-talkie. It feels historical in a way that requires tolerance for its own era.

Moulin Rouge1952

John Huston's film of bohemian Paris, with José Ferrer as Toulouse-Lautrec. Same fascination with artistic dissolution, beauty amid decline, and people destroying themselves in pursuit of sensation and meaning.

But It's more painterly than narrative-driven; if you want plot momentum, you'll be disappointed. The film is deliberately static, observational.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from The Sun Also Rises

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

Breathless1960

Both follow charismatic people drifting through pleasure and avoiding commitment; both see romance as irreconcilable with survival. One is classical Hollywood, the other is its deliberate rejection—same story told in opposite languages.

Godard's ragbag of literary reference, romantic desperation, and beautiful people in crisis. Like The Sun Also Rises but made by someone smashing cinema grammar to pieces—same sense of doomed aimlessness, completely different aesthetic velocity.

But If you're not used to French New Wave, the fractured editing and dialogue-heavy scenes will feel like the film is broken. It's aggressively modern and sometimes deliberately sloppy.

The Barefoot Contessa1954

Ava Gardner again, this time playing a woman caught between multiple men in glamorous European settings. Cynical, sophisticated, and genuinely tragic beneath the glitter. Directed by Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

But The gender politics are dated, and the film's view of its female character is more punitive than sympathetic. It's also quite melodramatic about its final act.

The Killers1946

Hemingway adaptation with Burt Lancaster, about a man hiding from his violent past in a small town. Noir atmosphere, but with that same Hemingway sense of damaged men and inevitable fate.

But It's a crime noir, not a character study like The Sun Also Rises. The tone is much darker and the pace much faster.

Gentlemen Prefer Blondes1953

Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in Paris and on a ship—superficially lighter, but genuinely clever about women navigating bohemian spaces and male desire. Sharp comic writing about the same world, just from the other side.

But It's a musical comedy, which is a total tonal departure. If you want drama, this brightness might feel dismissive of the material.

The Postman Always Rings Twice1946

Lana Turner and John Garfield in a doomed passion story. Steamy, stylish, and ultimately tragic—two beautiful people making the worst choices. Same fatalism as Hemingway, American noir version.

But The plot relies on noir conventions that can feel thin if you're used to character-driven storytelling. It's primarily about desire and consequence, not depth.

Pickup on South Street1953

Both are fundamentally about the code by which damaged people live—what you owe, what you don't, how you stay intact when everything collapses. The Sun Also Rises explores this in drawing rooms; Pickup explores it in back alleys.

Samuel Fuller's pulp thriller with Richard Widmark—a pickpocket in Manhattan, espionage, betrayal, and a woman caught between desire and loyalty. Hemingway-level economy of emotion, but in the register of trash and street life instead of glamorous exile.

But It's a B-movie crime picture, and the plot is genuinely low-stakes compared to the emotional weight Hemingway carries. The style is hardboiled pulp, not literary adaptation.

The 10th Victim1965

Both present characters without stable values moving through a world of arbitrary rules and shallow pleasures, trying to find meaning in sex and violence. One is tragic and grounded; the other is burlesque and science-fictional. Same void, different mirrors.

Elio Petri's science-fiction satire: Marcello Mastroianni and Ursula Andress in a future where contract killing is legal sport. Absurdist, gorgeous, wickedly funny—it examines the same aimlessness and moral emptiness as The Sun Also Rises but through futurism instead of realism.

But It's campy and deliberately artificial; if you want to feel the weight of emotion, the stylization will feel like a barrier. It's also deeply strange in ways that are hard to categorize.