Panida to screen Across the River and Into the Trees, based on Hemingway war novel

By Zach Hagadone
Reader Staff

Though Ernest Hemingway’s novels For Whom the Bell Tolls (1940) and The Old Man and the Sea (1952) are perhaps his best known, Across the River and Into the Trees (1950) belongs among the top entries in his catalog.

Focused on a 50-year-old U.S. Army colonel stationed in post-World War II Venice and who has just received a terminal diagnosis, much of the novel takes place in the form of reminiscences about his experiences during World War I — alternating with his romance with a much younger Italian woman.

The thinly veiled autobiographical portrait of love, loss, war, life and death came to the big screen in 2022, with a film adaptation of the same title by Peter Flannery and starring Liev Schreiber as Col. Richard Cantwell and Matilda De Angelis as his lover Renata Contarini.

Across the River and Into the Trees premiered at the Sun Valley Film Festival — appropriate, given that Hemingway spent the final years of his life in the central Idaho resort community.  

The Panida Theater will bring the film to Sandpoint on Thursday, Sept. 26 as part of its $5 movie series. Doors open at 6:30 p.m. and the screening starts at 7 p.m. Get tickets at panida.org or at the door (300 N. First Ave., in downtown Sandpoint).