A review of the 1953 classic film “From Here To Eternity”
Based on a best-selling novel by James Jones, a 950-page work of the same title, this film is a gritty account of life on a US army base in Hawaii in 1941, just prior to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Although very much toned down from the scandalous book, this cinematic adaptation was still an unusually adult film for the time.
There is a lot going on in this wordy script which is much more character-driven than action-based. Burt Lancaster is the efficient sergeant who runs a tight operation but takes a risk in romancing the commander’s wife (Deborah Kerr), Montgomery Clift is the newly arrived rifleman who refuses to give in to bullying while falling in love with a local dancehall ‘hostess’ (Donna Reed), and Frank Sinatra plays an Italian-American soldier who is insulted and brutalised by an obnoxious stockade sergeant (Ernest Borgnine).
The movie is best-known these days for its scene of Lancaster and Kerr passionately kissing on the beach while the waves possess them, but this is a classic which attracted no less than 13 Academy Award nominations, including five for six of the named actors. It actually won eight, including Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Picture and Best Director for Fred Zinnemann who introduced a screening of the film at London’ National Film Theatre which I attended in 1982 when he was 75.
Note: The title phrase comes originally from Rudyard Kipling’s 1892 poem “Gentlemen-Rankers”, about soldiers of the British Empire who had “lost [their] way” and were “damned from here to eternity”.