From Here to Eternity 1953 Movie
Frank Sinatra – From Here To Eternity
Donna Reed – From Here To Eternity
From Here to Eternity (1953) Prewitt, the bugler-hero of James Jones’ Dreiserian innovative about Army life in Hawaii before Pearl Harbor, is a soldier who loves the Army (he’s committed to be a 30-year man), however he believes that "if a man don’t go his own way, he’s nothin’." The dogfight between his status and his determination to have his rights is the mainspring of the battle. Jones’ bulky book does such an honest job of storytelling that it triumphs over its pedestrian prose; the film succeeds by the smooth efficiency of Fred Zinnemann’s lean, intelligent direction, and by the greatest casting. Montgomery Clift’s bony, irregularly handsome Prewitt is a hardhead, a limited man with a one-track mind, who’s intensely appealing; Clift has the force to attraction – all but to seduce – an audience without ever stepping outside his inflexible, none-too-smart character. Burt Lancaster has a role that’s basically perfectly in his range as Sergeant Warden, the man’s man who’s also a ladies’ man (the lady is Deborah Kerr); Frank Sinatra, in his first straight acting part, surprised audiences with a softly modulated, likable performance as Maggio, who loses his life because of his high spirits; Ernest Borgnine is the smiling, innocently murderous Fatso; Donna Reed is the respectable prostitute. This was the picture of its year, as On the Waterfront was to be the next year, and not just because each swept the Academy Awards, nonetheless because these films brought current attitudes to the screen that touched a social nerve; they weren’t the same kind of winner as Ben-Hur. On the other hand a displacement occurs in the course of the clash here: Prewitt’s fate gets buried in the commotion of the Japanese do violence to on Pearl Harbor. And Clift’s novel performance was buried in the populace praise for Sinatra and Lancaster. It was almost as if the public wanted to forget Prewitt’s troublesome presence. The remarkably compact screenplay is by Daniel Taradash. Produced by Buddy Adler, for Columbia; cinematography by Burnett Guffey. With Philip Ober, Harry Bellaver, and Mickey Shaughnessy. b & w
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