Video Review: 'For Whom the Bell Tolls' (1995)

The first video release of this Hollywood chestnut should create nearly as much ballyhoo as the original theatrical version did. For WHom the Bell Tolls arrives with restored footage, deluxe packaging — even overture and intermission music presented with production stills. But at nearly three hours, Ernest Hemingway's Spanish Civil War saga — starring Gary Cooper (as an American demolitions expert sent to blow up a crucial bridge) and Ingrid Bergman (radiant but miscast as a young Spanish woman with whom he falls in love) — remains slow moving and bloated. Still, fans of Cooper and Bergman — and lovers of ravishing early Technicolor — will not mind one bit. B-