(Dir: Fred Zinnemann, Starring Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, Philip Ober, Mickey Shaughnessy, Harry Bellaver, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Warden, John Dennis, Merle Travis, Tim Ryan, Arthur Keegan, and Barbara Morrison)
"The Japanese sneak attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the United States into World War II has inspired a splendid movie, full of vivid performances and unforgettable scenes, a movie that uses the coming of war as a backdrop for individual stories of love, ambition, heroism, and betrayal. The name of that movie is From Here to Eternity."
That was the great opening paragraph to A.O. Scott's oft-scathing review of the recent film Pearl Harbor. That film, with its misrepresentation of everything that From Here to Eternity fans hold dear, made the historical moment seem more like a jumping board for a soppy romantic triangle that had less bang than a sparkler at a Fourth of July barbeque.
As an alternative, 48 years old and still potent, From Here to Eternity has everything needed to fulfill someone's yearning for a Pearl Harbor centered romance. In the 1953 Fred Zinnemann classic, a trilogy of tales about Army men stationed at nearby Schofield Barracks play as intriguing tales with a regular dependence on day-to-day-life. None of those involved know that in a couple of weeks, Japanese planes will bomb the island they live on and that their lives will be forever changed.
The film opens with Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Clift), affectionately called 'Prew,' entering the office of his new commander Captain Dana Holmes (Ober). Prew was formerly part of the bugle corps as a corporal but requested transfer to a regular company making him a private. This move is great news to Holmes, who knows that Prew is a very capable boxer and sees him as a nice addition to the "G" Company boxing squad. In Holmes' mind, winning the regiment championship would mean going from Captain Holmes to Major Holmes. But Prew is defiant in his decision to stop boxing -- a tale later told in the film gives credence to this decision -- and becomes the kicking boy for Holmes and his lackeys; they think that if they can beat him, he'll join them.
While fighting his battles on the fort, Prew finds two people to become personal with: one a female for romance, the other a male for companionship. She is Alma Burke (Reed), a prostitute at the local gentlemen's club; he is Private Angelo Maggio (Sinatra), the only person that seems to stickup for Prew when the commanders follow Holmes' order to push Prew into submission.
Maggio himself has something of a problem occurring. In his regular drunken visits to said gentlemen's club, he has made an enemy out of Stockade Sergeant "Fatso" Judson (Borgnine). They regularly duke it out as an intoxicated Maggio tries aimlessly to defeat the much larger and more aggressive Judson. Their continued battles lead to an ending that neither one of them really expect.
To compliment the budding romance between Prew and Alma is another, more clandestine affair. The top non-commissioned officer and right-hand-man of Captain Holmes, Sergeant Milton Warden (Lancaster), is having a tryst with Holmes' wife Karen (Kerr). She has a reputation for being promiscuous and he has made a career out of doing all of Holmes' work; in a way, making love to her is merely the next step in his job. Yet, there is something missing: she wants him to be a commissioned officer before she can leave her husband and he cannot get beyond the many men that she has already been with (that famous scene on the beach precedes him chastising her for her sloven past).
And all these stories are detailed to a point up until the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Each person in the story has a dream, but none of them really can come to fruition. It is not until the attack changes them that they really can go somewhere, whether it is for the better or the worse (for some, they pay the ultimate price). There is a beautiful shot in the film, where, after the audience has become entrenched in these stories, the camera veers from the main character in the scene to a calendar showing the date: 6 December 1941.
The novel From Here to Eternity by James Jones was a tawdry little book and could not make it onto screen as a straight adaptation. This film, written for the screen by Daniel Taradesh (one of the film's many Oscar winners), tones down some of the turgid details and makes it more accessible to a wide audience. Nevertheless, the lewdness of some of the undertones is still quite visible. Never said in so many words, there are no doubts that Alma is a prostitute and Karen is a tramp. Though some might make comments about a misogynistic idea to the female characters, it is safe to point out that none of the males in the film are free of flaws themselves. And, one should note, the only characters that really seem intent on their dreams are the women of the tale.
Fred Zinnemann was in the early part of his long successful period when he made From Here to Eternity. Though he had been making films for some 23 years before Eternity, Zinnemann did not really come into his own until 1948's The Search (also starring Montgomery Clift) and would soon have a huge success with 1952's High Noon. Zinnemann's productivity may have gone down in the years after Eternity, but the value of the productions went up. Oklahoma!, The Sundowners, The Old Man and the Sea, The Nun's Story, A Man for All Seasons, The Day of the Jackal, and Julia all show some of the best genre switching that a director did, only lesser in comparison to Stanley Kubrick's.
With From Here to Eternity, Zinnemann did more with long, uncut shots than many of today's directors do in their hundreds of cuts within a single scene. Zinnemann, editor William Lyon, and cinematographer Burnett Guffey won well deserved Academy Awards for their efforts in creating one of the best portrayals of Army life in the pre-WWII Pacific. Juggling all three stories, Zinnemann et al. make everything fall into place with grace and beauty, even when the events portrayed are neither graceful nor beautiful.
However nice the visuals in the film may be, the real memorable part is the acting that is found in From Here to Eternity. While Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster give their requisite fine performances, Montgomery Clift further proved that he was much more than just another pretty face. While there's a little more introspective acting to his work in Red River, A Place in the Sun, and The Search, From Here to Eternity's Prewitt would be Clift's best performance until his post-wreck performance in Judgment at Nuremberg.
Yet none of the three leads won at the Academy Awards (Clift and Lancaster understandably lost to William Holden in Stalag 17 and Kerr lost to young ingénue Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday), while their supporting players both took home trophies. Donna Reed would, of course, later become the idealized housewife on television, but in From Here to Eternity, she showed the magnitude she could exude in a film. Though her entire career would be filled with roles more akin to her Mary in It's a Wonderful Life, the character in which she proved her acting ability (and won her Oscar) was Alma in Eternity.
Frank Sinatra won the other acting Oscar for the film in a performance that rejuvenated his waning career at the time. This was just after Sinatra's vocal cord injury that almost ended his singing career and Sinatra was in dire need for an acting role to put him back on the map. Thanks to his famous mob connections (the movie producer's meeting with the horse head in The Godfather was slightly based on what happened to get Sinatra the part), Sinatra was given the role of Maggio and would, of course, ride his way into film history with a long career unparalleled by any singer-turned actor before or since.
However, when From Here to Eternity comes to a close on my umpteenth viewing, my mind is not on what got Sinatra there or where Zinnemann or Reed would go in their future careers. Instead, I am heartened to think of what magic had just transpired on the screen in front of me. In nearly half a century, From Here to Eternity has not lost its touch.
Rating: A+ / **** out of 4
--David Perry
Read more from this author at Cinema-Scene.com
This review is also found at: http://www.cinema-scene.com/archive/volume-3-number-21.html
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