BOSTON (AP) – A new documentary about Ernest Hemingway – fueled by vast but little-known archives kept at the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library and Museum in Boston – sheds new light on the acclaimed novelist.
“Hemingway,” by longtime contributors Ken Burns and Lynn Novick, which premieres on PBS on three consecutive nights since April 5, takes a more nuanced look at the author and his long-standing reputation as an alcoholic, adventurer, and free and misogynist-loving bullfighter who struggled with internal turmoil that eventually led to his death by suicide at the age of 61.
The truth about the man many consider to be America’s greatest novelist of the 20th century – whose concise writing style made him an oversized celebrity who became a symbol of unrepentant American masculinity – is much more complex, Novick said. .
“We hope this film opens up opportunities to look at Hemingway in different ways,” said Novick, who co-created several other documentaries with Burns, including “The Vietnam War” and “Prohibition.” “There is a complexity beneath the surface.”
This complexity would have been almost impossible to detail without the largest Hemingway collection in the world that reached the JFK Library, thanks to the widows of Hemingway and Kennedy.
Although the two men never met, they admired each other and corresponded briefly. Hemingway was even invited to Kennedy’s inauguration, but was unable to do so due to illness, said Hilary Justice, the Hemingway scholar who resides at the library.
When Hemingway’s fourth wife, Mary Hemingway, realized what to do with her late husband’s effects, she asked Jackie Kennedy if they could be housed at the JFK Library.
The archives contain Hemingway’s manuscripts – including “The Sun Rises and” and “For Whom the Bell Rings” – personal correspondence and about 11,000 photographs.
Much of the material used in the documentary has not been widely seen in public, even if it is not at all, Novick said.
Burns has been to the JFK Library on several occasions for various functions, but had no idea about the extent of the Hemingway archives until they began researching the film, which has been in the works for years.
“The Hemingway collection was key to the process,” Burns said. “It helped us understand exactly what a disciplined writer he was.”
Much of the documentary deals with Hemingway’s complicated relationship with the women in his life, from his mother and sisters to the nurse he fell in love with as he healed from the wounds he suffered in World War I to his four wives.
“A lot of what he did in life was about love: running to her, running away from her and ruining her,” Burns said.
Although he was considered the archetype of American manhood, the truth about Hemingway’s masculinity was more complex, the filmmakers discovered.
As a child, Hemingway’s mother treated him and one of his sisters as twins, often dressing them in identical outfits, sometimes as boys, sometimes as girls. He explored gender fluidity both in his books and in life, letting his hair grow while his wives cut theirs.
“We wanted to push back against the idea that Hemingway doesn’t like women,” Novick said.
The favorite part of Novick’s collection was Hemingway’s manuscripts, many handwritten on notebooks bought in the store. They show in detail his thought process as he wrote, rewrote, modified and edited his works through cross-outs, scribbles and margin notes.
Hemingway, for example, wrote dozens of endings in “A Farewell to Arms” – up to 47, according to one issue.
“You can watch how each work developed, from the first version to the final manuscript,” she said.
For Burns, the most striking thing about the collection is the pieces of shrapnel dug from Hemingway’s body after he was almost killed as a teenager driving a Red Cross ambulance in World War I. Burns can’t help but believe that such a … experience of death had a major impact on the rest of Hemingway’s life and contributed to his death.
Whether you’re passionate about Hemingway, or know virtually nothing about it, there’s something in store for you, Novick said.
“There is a huge amount to learn and new interpretations of his work and life here,” she said.