Review of From Here to Eternity (1953) by Patrick B — 26 Apr 2010

The cast, you know, full of stars. The story is close to incoherent by the time it finishes. The acting is superb. The best part of this movie is the dialogue, it's often poignant and usually entertaining. The famous scene with the couple kissing on the Hawaiian beach as the waves flow over them is still visually stunning. The story and subplots have a lot of build up, fine tuning the engine, but then it never goes anywhere special.

In fact all the male leads are moronic. Lancaster decides to seduce the wife of his superior knowing she has a reputation of being a player, but gets upset with her for her past. Hey pal, you're the one who makes a play for a married woman knowing she had a past. Idiot. He falls in love, but no real story is given to why or how they fall in love. It felt fast, trashy and false. It is unclear why they actually break up, her reputation, he is married to the army...something like that. Then Maggio (Frank Sinatra) is the best friend of Prewitt (the lead, Montgomery Clift) and it is his character's job to be an alchoholic, troublemaker with little respect for army regulations. He picks a fight with some guy playing the piano, (Fatso, Ernest Borgnine) because he doesn't like the way he plays ...or something. Later on Fatso ends up playing a part in the death of Maggio. This was a sad turn of events and Fatso was a sadistic jerk, but Maggio wasn't so sharp to pick a fight with his future nemesis. I'm just saying I don't quite see the point, the moral for the tragedy. What is the writer's goal? Then there is Prewitt, who joins the company and is hounded because he won't box with the team, and he's a good boxer. With his help they could win, making life better for his superiors. They abuse him for most of the film, but he won't budge because of a nasty sparring mishap with an old friend he had. He falls for a girl in a club who's paid to hang out with the guys after about ten seconds. He gets jealous before he even knows anything about her and their love story, although more involved than the one with Lancaster, is not so romantic as to convey on screen something more than basic chemistry and simple plot devices.

I had no problem with Prewitt until the end. He is wounded in the gut from a knife fight and holed up with his girl, but after the attack on Pearl Harbor decides to join his company despite the fact he may face a murder trial. OK. He is sneaking about the island with a strict curfew in force because they think the Japanese may invade on land. A military man spots him and asks him to halt. SPOILER ALERT: he doesn't. Through luck he avoids some bullets. Then some other guys say halt. He doesn't and is killed. Why? Because he's a fool. There is no good explanation why he would run with a gun pointed at him. If you see a reasonable or sufficiently artistic element to this stupidity I'd like to know what it is.

The romance comes across as dime store novel satire on army love life. The story is watchable, but doesn't resonate, because it doesn't lead anywhere. What it is more than anything else is a love story between man and army. "But the army has treated you like dirt." "Nothing says the thing a man loves has to love him back." Pithy interchanges such as this keep the film from sinking into the sea.