Despite the 6-hour running time, this documentary skips along the surface of Hemingway's life like a piece of flint.
Great writer? Yes. Great man? No. Hemingway was a narcissist, a liar, a brute, a womanizer, and a blowhard.
Hemingway basically lived off his wives and lost the friendship of everyone he ever knew. And while this documentary skips along with fleeting mentions of Gertrude Stein, Ezra Pound, James Joyce, John Dos Passos, Sherwood Anderson, F. Scott Fitzgerald, etc., it totally neglects an important Paris connection: Robert McAlmon.
It was McAlmon who published Hemingway's first book: "Three Stories and Ten Poems" thru his Contact Publishing. It was McAlmon who accompanied and paid for Hemingway's first trip to Spain to watch the bull fights. And it was McAlmon who was among the first people Hemingway turned on after his success with "The Sun Also Rises."
The novel's character Robert Loeb is based on Harold Loeb and also McAlmon. Hemingway turned on McAlmon and called him a gossip after he learned that McAlmon was "telling tales" about his his sexual proclivities and punched him out in a bar screaming. "Now tell that to your goddamned friends!"
McAlmon later got revenge in his memoir "Being Geniuses Together," and their relationship was further examined in "Letters from Oblivion," a novel by Edward Lorusso.
Great writer, yes. But Hemingway was one nasty piece of work!
