From Here to Eternity

Rating:
Summary: AFI top 100- Winner of 8 Oscars-Including Best Movie 1953!!
Review: "From Here to Eternity" made from Best Seller book of 1951 written by James Jones. Now digitally re-mastered both in video and sound provides us with this classic on DVD with background extras. The cast (Burt Lancaster, Deborah Kerr, Montgomery Cliff, Donna Reed and Frank Sinatra)was perfectly chosen and proved by the 13 Oscar nominations and winner of 8 including "Best Picture and Director - Fred Zinneman". Frank Sinatras "Best Supporting Actor" come back role is just the beginning.
In Summary: a few days prior to Pearl Harbor we find ourselves involved with these military characters and women struggling to find better lives in the volatile world of 1941. Knowing war is coming they try desparately to make their lives more meanigfully. The main focus is around the Army life style and how their lives were effected by events they had no real control over. Lancaster played a top sergeant having an affair with his Company Commanders wife (Kerr), Cliff and Sinatra were 2 soldiers in the same company who befriend each other and end up both being killed by circumstances in this troubled time of December 7, 1941.
This Black & White classic film broke all kinds of barriers for subject matter and character/star representation. Reed as a saloon gal. Kerr as a steamy temptress (infamous Beach Love scene with Lancaster).
Sit back and take a ride "FROM HERE TO ETERNITY".

Rating:
Summary: A Screenwriter's Delight
Review: I never got around to watching this film in its entirety until last year; growing up, mum and dad always watched b&w films which I hated, in my youthful ignorance, but this one, I can see exactly why they loved it.

It's a seamless movie from beginning to end, and although fans of the book (I haven't read it) deride it for not having been faithful enough to the core of the book, I think it stands alone as a monumental piece of cinema; one that couldn't be remade today with any living actor.

Montgomery Clift and Burt Lancaster as the dual-leads both hearken to different schools of acting; Clift as a method actor, and Lancaster as a genuine tough guy (a-la Cagney), but the casting director knew what he/she was doing. Sinatra, more known for his singing career (and a few movie musicals["Anchors Away"]) pulled this role out of his hat, and deservedly picked up an oscar. Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed also hold their own, but the real killer in this film isn't the acting or the scenery--it's the dialogue.

I recommend it to any writer, as a primer in how to write a classy, lean script that never wastes a line.

Rating:
Summary: "Why doesn't that officer stop that fight?"
Review: U.S. Army private Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) is fighting for his life in a boxing match with another officer who started the fight. His commanding officer, Captain Holmes, had been pressuring him to fight with the company's boxing team, but he had refused. Holmes' commanding officers observing this from above make the above comment.

In the movie, the year is 1941, the place is Schofield barracks, where some of the shooting for the film actually took place, just 8 miles from Pearl Harbor. The movie was based on a book of the same name, a bit controversial in that its depiction of Army life was graphic and not commending. The fate of the really harmless, Maggio (Frank Sinatra), another private first class who half the time is near dead drunk, is one of the many tragedies of the story. The men in the barracks are merely biding their time, training, boozing, chasing skirts while their officers, during their breaks, read the newspaper on events of the war in europe. Pearl Harbor is just 8 miles down the road...Two separate love stories develop between Seargent Warden (Burt Lancaster) and Mrs. Holmes (Deborah Kerr), the wife of the Commanding Officer of the barracks, and Prewitt and a call girl, Lorene (Donna Reed).

This movie is not over-rated; it's still a classic in my book. I was moved the first time I saw this years ago as much as I am now. Although, the second time around, I'm more enamored with Clift's acting, the other hero in the story. Interestingly his birthday was yesterday, and he died young at 46 of a heart attack. He started out on Broadway, was reluctant to try Hollywood, was very selective about the parts he'd choose to be in. He was unique, untraditional in many ways. It was rumored that he was a homosexual, though I'm not so sure, neither do I care; he was just a d--n good actor who prepared the way for Brando and Dean. There are so many other great actors in this film too, and the footage of the bombing of Pearl Harbor, from newsreels of other naval battles, is so realistic, so effectively woven into the story. Well worth watching several times over, and never mind the famous, steamy smooching scene on a beach of Honolulu; there's much more to the story than that. True gem of a movie.

Rating:
Summary: From Here to a Half Century in the Past
Review: This film deserves its status as a classic if for no other reason than the fact that it pushed the boundaries of what could be depicted in the Hollywood of the early Fifties. Set on pre-war O'ahu and only a dozen years after the famous historical event that serves as its backdrop, this film avoids an easy reliance on the attack on Pearl Harbor to capture its audience. Indeed, we are given only occasional reminders of this imminent military disaster, which contributes to the tone of dramatic irony in this film. For despite the very real anguish in the lives of these characters, and the trials of military treatment, we as the audience know it pales by comparison to what will soon ensue. Paradise, too, is mostly a backdrop as the action fixates on a small group of soldiers and their personal lives. Herein is the strength of the film: its round characterization, which is convincing and therefore engaging. Sinatra gives his role more zeal than it deserves and Deborah Kerr and Donna Reed are (dare I say it?) too old for their roles, but other than that the acting is superb. If you've ever visited Hawaii, you'll enjoy the vistas, although they're actually few and far between. If you've lived in Hawaii, or been stationed on one of the bases there, you'll quickly be scratching your head at the lack of local flavor. That is, this is nearly an all-haole (re: white) production in place where whites even then were not the majority. You do see the occasional Chinese, although those walking Chinatown near Nuuanu Street look like they walked out of a Qing Dynasty mural. Still, the conflicts are genuinely configured and the resulting tension is thick and suspenseful. For this reason, more than any other, this film deserves a place on your home video shelf. And need I say that the film benefits from the endearing title of the novel on which its crisp screenplay is based?

Rating:
Summary: The Peacetime Classic !
Review: "From Here to Eternity" is a Hollywood classic. It may be the finest film ever about the military in peacetime. The background is Schofield Barracks, Hawaii in the Fall of 1941. That was the old "brown boot" Army! This reviewer is a Vietnam era vet, so I can't address the realism of the setting. Judging by the crisp dialog and snappy khaki uniforms, I'm giving the director the benefit of any doubt. I always thought it fascinating that an Austrian born Director could be at the helm of such classics as "High Noon" and FHTE -in consecutive years no less. What did Mr. Zinnemann know of the Old West or the American Army? The male lead is Burt Lancaster as First Sergeant Warden, a tough but fair NCO that any enlisted man would want for his "top". The second male lead is Private Prewitt, played by Montgomery Clift. Prewitt is a top bugler who isn't allowed to bugle and a top boxer who reuses to box for the company team! How that automatic conflict plays out is the heart of the movie. Another conflict is between Frank Sinatra, a happy go lucky but harmless enlisted man who trouble seems to follow and an evil Ernest Borgnine, the top MP at the Schofield stockade. Their "dispute" plays out too, with Clift a surprise key figure in its' "resolution". This reviewer believes that far too much attention has been lavished on the affair between Lancaster and Deborah Kerr, the wife of the Company Commander. I found it hard to swallow that any serious career man would run around openly with an officer's wife. Lancaster was one step away from a bust down to the lowest private and a trip to the stockade. The real female star here was Donna Reed, a bar "hostess' who would be a prostitute in real life. Her sensitivity toward Clift produces some of the best scenes in FHTE. Someone must have agreed because Donna walked off with the Best Supporting Actress Oscar- and promptly fainted after receiving it. The interplay between Lancaster/Kerr and Clift/Reed caused some huge challenges for the Director in making the bawdy best selling novel "clean" for the silver screen in the still conservative, prudish America of 1953. FHTE also contains some of the sharpest dialog and one liners this reviewer can remember. Two favorites: "Never disturb a man when he's drinking" (Lancaster) and "No one lies about being lonely"(Clift). In addition to Reed, Oscars were awarded for Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Film Editing, Cinematography and Supporting Actor, (Sinatra). The last two are important: FHTE revived Frank's career. Many believe that "pressure" was applied to Harry Cohn and Columbia Pictures to hire Sinatra. Do we remember the "horses head in the bed" scene from Godfather I? Others claim that his then wife, Ava Gardner, supplied the "influence". Finally FHTE is yet another example of why black and white classics should not be colorized. If there is such a thing as "beautiful black and white", it is this one. ....

Rating:
Summary: A Superbit waste
Review: Yes, it's a good film but why release it in a Superbit version? It is filmed in full sceen (4x3), in black & white, and with a mono (DTS yet) soundtrack. This film certainly rates a dvd release with extras and all but to do a Superbit version? It's a total waste of the technology.