From Here to Eternity (1953)

From Here to Eternity is an American romantic film drama first released in 1953, directed by Fred Zinnemann.  The film is based on a novel by James Jones and stars Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed and Frank Sinatra.  Our overall rating for this film is: excellent.


December, 1941.  Whilst a fierce war is being waged in Europe, North Africa and the Far East, the United States waits on the sidelines.  But not for much longer.  After a run in with his superiors, Private Robert Prewitt is transferred to Schofield Barracks, a military base at Pearl Harbour, Hawaii.  The company commander, Captain Holmes, has heard that Prewitt is a prize-winning boxer and intends that he should fight in the coming boxing tournament.   When Prewitt refuses, Holmes order his first sergeant, Milton Warden, to make his life as difficult as possible, believing that he will eventually relent.  Holmes, a serial adulterer, is oblivious to the fact that Warden is having a clandestine love affair with his wife, Karen.  She wants Warden to train to become an officer so that they can begin a new life together in the United States, but the sergeant loathes officers and cannot see himself as one of their kind.  Meanwhile, Prewitt has become the company punch bag, with only one man, Private Angelo Maggio, standing by him.  Maggio is himself maltreated by his superiors, especially the Italian-hating Fatso Judson, and ends up in the stockade after going absent without leave.  Meanwhile, Prewitt has fallen for a nightclub hostess named Lorene.  Having sustained a near-fatal stab wound after a tussle with Judson, Prewitt seeks refuge in Lorene’s apartment, just as Japanese warplanes begin to attack the island...

Fred Zinnemann certainly had his work cut out for him when he was given the onerous task of bringing James Jones’s mammoth novel From Here to Eternity to the big screen.  Caught between Columbia boss Harry Cohn, who wanted to retain the strong language and explicit love scenes of the novel, and the Hollywood censors, who would never allow such things to be heard and seen in a motion picture, Zinnemann must have felt he was fighting a losing battle.  It was only his tenacity that allowed him to cast Montgomery Clift and Frank Sinatra in what would, for both actors, be career defining roles.  The gambles and hard work paid off.  The film was a major commercial and critical success and virtually swept the board at the 1954 Academy Awards ceremony.  Of the thirteen nominations it garnered, the film won eight Oscars, in categories that included: Best Picture, Best Director, Best Black and White Cinematography, Best Supporting Actor (Sinatra) and Best Supporting Actress (Donna Reed).  

From Here to Eternity is a classic of 1950s Hollywood cinema but is particularly noteworthy for two reasons.  First, it offers a far from favourable portrayal of the U.S. military, in which soldiers are victimised and bullied by their superiors, some of whom have clear xenophobic tendencies.  The source novel is even more scathing than the film and, initially, the army withheld their permission for the use of Schofield Barracks until changes had been made to the script. The most significant change demanded by the military was that the villain of the piece, Captain Holmes, was severely sanctioned at the end of the film (in the novel, the character was let off without so much as a reprimand).  

Just as significant is the notorious beach sequence in which Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster make love and movie history with a full-on, partially nude horizontal clinch of the kind that had never before been seen in an American film.   This scene was especially shocking to contemporary audiences because Kerr was then considered to be the model of prim English womanhood, the last person to be seen frolicking in the sand with a musclebound hunk.  The fact that this scene now appears anodyne and unremarkable shows how much attitudes and censorship rules have changed since the film was made.

With its stark depiction of army life and its spectacular staging of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, From Here to Eternity ushered in a new kind of American war film, one with far greater realism and far less woolly romanticism than what had preceded it.  Soldiers are portrayed not as bland action heroes but as complex individuals, many with troubled backgrounds, some being out-and-out villains.  Fred Zinnemann’s faultless direction is complemented by some stunning performances, particularly from Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift.  Although Lancaster would go on to greater things, this was the high point of Clift’s short but brilliant career, a lasting reminder of the talent of one of Hollywood’s most accomplished actors.

© filmsdefrance.com 2009

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