Best Picture: #26
Original Release Date: August 28, 1953
Rating: Passed
Runtime: 1 hour, 58 minutes
Director: Fred Zinnemann
Quick Impressions:
So many movies and television shows have parodied From Here to Eternity. I’m pretty sure that everyone knows that iconic image of waves crashing over two prone lovers locked in a sandy embrace. Even my daughter said it seemed vaguely familiar.
But I had never seen the film myself until now. I’m starting to find this distinctly odd. I grew up watching and loving classic films. My mom still prefers the offerings of old Hollywood to the movies of today, and my grandma routinely urged us, “Let’s watch a good one!” (by which she meant something from a classic movie channel). We usually did.
So why have I seen so few of these early Best Picture winners?
This one has a glowing reputation, and honestly, it’s worth a watch just for the Oscar-winning, against-type performance by Donna Reed, though fellow Oscar winner Frank Sinatra’s Maggio is actually my favorite character.
The Plot:
Hawaii, 1941. Former bugler Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) transfers to a new military base where the captain promises him quick advancement as long as he joins the boxing team. Meanwhile, there’s just one thing Private Prewitt has vowed never to do–box again. Sergeant Warden (Burt Lancaster) is completely exasperated by Prewitt’s stubborn refusal to give in to the captain. As the captain’s right hand man who keeps the base running, the sergeant knows that the captain is a total jerk who will punish Prewitt in merciless, unethical ways. Under the captain’s orders, soon the entire boxing team begins to make Prewitt’s life miserable, but Sergeant Warden is busy making his own life miserable by having a splashy, ill-advised affair with the captain’s miserable wife, Karen. To distract himself from the tortures of his work environment, Prewitt begins accompanying his friend Maggio to a club for lonely soldiers and soon falls in love with one of the women who works there who isn’t actually named Lorene. She loves him, too, but he doesn’t fit in with her life plan. Meanwhile Maggio has worries of his own because an Italian-hating Ernest Borgnine plans to murder him at the first opportunity. All of their troubles come to a head right around December 7th at 7:50 am.
The Good:
Donna Reed astonished me in this role. It’s by far the best acting I’ve seen from her, and it’s so against type. I feel like I’ve been underestimating her all these years, never knowing this compelling, surprising performance existed.
“I hope she won an Oscar for this,” I remarked to my daughter as we watched. And she did, of course, win Best Supporting Actress. I’m not sure if years of following the Oscars have honed my sense of what an Academy Award winning performance looks like, or if it’s just easy for anyone to call. The most electric performances in movies nominated for Best Picture often end up winning Oscars. Since we’ve started this project, I’ve been able to call the Oscar winners so easily. (Well, it’s less calling them than saying, “I love this performance! I really hope this person won!” And it always turns out that they did.)
Reed is such a standout here. I find it strange that she was nominated in Supporting Actress and co-star Deborah Kerr in lead when Reed seems to get much more useful screen time. To be fair, Kerr may actually be on screen more. I don’t know. But Reed’s character gets much, much more development, more revealing dialogue, and a series of highly captivating small moments. (Kerr, in contrast, gets one big moment that, for me, comes way too early in the film to be her only revelation.)
Montgomery Clift also gives a brilliant performance as the stubborn former bugler who is persistently unwilling to box, despite the prowess in the ring he has demonstrated formerly. What I like best about Clift’s performance is the way our understanding of his character evolves over time as he’s given the chance to reveal more and more and more of himself. (Unlike some other characters, Prew gives us a big revelation about a moment that changed his life, and then he goes on quietly revealing more and more about himself as the movie continues.) Of all the characters in the film, Prewitt’s is easiest for me (personally) to relate to. Clift plays the character with such soulful intensity.
A major strength of the movie, in fact, is the way it gradually reveals to us more and more about what motivates the characters. Basically all of them exhibit behavior that seems puzzling, off-putting, or extreme at first glance. But then as we spend more time with them, the reasoning (and emotional responses) behind the choices they make becomes increasingly clear.
Clift, though, gives us the most complete character study. I don’t know whether I should credit the actor or the script. Is he just giving a great performance, or does he have the best part as written? Or perhaps Prewitt just behaves in a way that, to some degree, resonates with me (i.e. “I have decided to do this based on strong convictions, even if it is to some degree illogical and self-defeating and makes my life harder.”)
Maybe my favorite character in the film is Frank Sinatra’s infectiously charming, hot-headed Angelo Maggio. (Well, I’m not sure “hot-headed” is a fair description. Basically, when someone loudly calls him an ethnic slur and insults his sister, he gets mad. I’m pretty sure I would, too.) I could listen to Sinatra sing all day long, but I’ve never found him very interesting as an actor. (Well, I mean, unless you count the his fictionalized alter-ego in The Godfather. That’s obviously a compelling story.) I really like his Maggio, though. In fact, I was far more invested in Maggio’s ongoing antagonism with a surprisingly sinister Ernest Borgnine than I ever was in the splashy love story between Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr. (My mom is a big fan of Deborah Kerr, and I love a lot of her work, but I wish she had an enlarged role here.) I knew already that Sinatra won an Oscar for his supporting turn as Maggio, and I think he deserves it.
I also had fun seeing surprising people pop up in the supporting cast, like a young Jack Warden. I know Warden’s had a long career, but he was always popping up here, there, and everywhere during my childhood in the 80s and 90s, so I always imagine him being about that age.
My daughter and I enjoyed the song “Re-enlistment Blues,” too. I wish Sinatra got to sing, although this is the best acting I’ve ever seen him do, so maybe not giving him a song was the right choice.
The other element of the film I found appealing was its focus on the personal lives of so many unremarkable U.S. citizens living in Hawaii. The film’s protagonists are all either soldiers or women strongly associated with soldiers, yet so much of the film focuses on their personal lives, their casual world of off-duty entertainment. I’ve occasionally heard people argue that Pearl Harbor wasn’t “really” an attack on American soil because Hawaii wasn’t a state at the time, but the people living near this base could be anywhere in the United States. I mean, yeah, they all wear Hawaiian shirts, but still, they’re Americans.
Best Scene:
This is tough. Some of my favorite moments in the film are the exchanges between Montgomery Clift and Donna Reed. His behavior is so irrational and inappropriate initially, but in this situation, I see and believe the mutual (though inconvenient) attraction between the characters. I love the moment when Prewitt explains to Alma why he doesn’t box anymore. I also love the moment when she explains her life plan to him.
Best Scene Visually:
The most iconic scene in From Here to Eternity of course features the stolen embraces of Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster in the crashing waves on the beach.
I also like the use of light and shadow in the back alley knife fight.
Best Action Sequence:
Best, of course, is the bombing of Pearl Harbor. I particularly like the way the film sets this up. To prepare us, we see a key character casually stand near a wall calendar long enough for us to take note of the date. Saturday, December 6th. Now I’m no military historian, but when I see that date pop up in a film about military men in Hawaii, I start to prepare myself mentally for what’s coming in the morning. Sure enough, a couple of scenes later, we see a number of soldiers eating breakfast with an extremely prominently placed wall clock behind them reading 7:50.
This part of the movie is particularly exciting because although the viewer is given time to prepare, the characters are taken totally by surprise. The entire plot of the movie up to that point just gets thrown out the window. Men have taken stands, endured suffering, made escapes, fallen in love, killed and been killed. None of that matters much now. That Japanese are attacking Pearl Harbor. I like the implication that all along these soldiers have lived their tightly focused, intricate, individual stories, but they’re actually all supporting players, and what’s bound to become one of the most important events in their lives is something they didn’t see even see coming.
In some ways, this feels like a twist ending. It reminds me of the wildly disorienting finish of the novel Things Fall Apart.
The Negatives:
That famous beach scene is so iconic that I expected more from the Burt Lancaster/Deborah Kerr love story. But honestly, the best part of their affair is pretty much that one scene. Both characters would benefit from more screen time and development, but Kerr in particular just needs more to do.
Karen is such a vexing character. All she ever says is, “You don’t really want to be with me,” or “You don’t want to marry me,” or “You regret this.” It starts to seem almost comical. That’s the way she fills any silence. And if Lancaster’s character ever asks her a question, she blurts out, “You don’t really want to marry me,” as an answer. (I joked to my daughter, “Ketchup, mustard, or mayo?” “You don’t really want to marry me.”) It’s pretty much the only thing she says in the movie, and it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Her story about her reason for being miserable and cheating on her husband bothers me a bit. For one thing–although I worry I’m being unfair– awful and traumatic though her motivating experience may be, the event also seems vaguely improbable. I mean, if she had a telephone, and her husband was so notoriously unreliable, couldn’t she have called someone else? Wouldn’t a prudent person take such a proactive step? (Maybe I’m forgetting some pertinent detail. Did she pass out before she could make other calls?) I’ll admit that this might simply be unfair of me. Karen probably lies awake at night asking herself the same question.
Details aside, Karen has been scarred by a trauma that still motivates her. I get that. My own childbirth-related traumas have continued to shape me, and I got a much happier ending there than Karen. But I do wish we continued to hear more from her. This early revelation shows us that Karen is complex and driven by tragedy. But then, that’s it. Kerr’s performance is captivating enough, but Karen gets one big (very early) reveal and then simply repeats variations of the same hollow worries for the rest of the film. When we first hear about Karen’s trauma, that gives us a jumping off point for beginning to understand her. But no further progress is made. I suppose she’s frozen in the past, and that’s part of the point. I just wish the film let us get to know her better.
Even more troubling is something I became attentive to because of my daughter’s comments as she watched. Initially, Lancaster’s character treats Kerr’s character horribly. He acknowledges his sexual attraction to her, yet he seems to resent her, to blame her for being attractive to him. He treats her pretty badly on their first date. It’s kind of bizarre that he feels entitled to behave this way. I understand that this is a movie about the 1940s made in the 1950s, but still, what gives him the right to police all of her previous personal behavior, to blame her for things that (he’s heard) she did before she even knew him? What claim does he have on her exactly? Yes, it’s 1953’s take on 1941, but he isn’t her husband (or her father). He’s the guy who aggressively showed up at her house to initiate an affair with her. It’s vaguely creepy that he feels entitled to punish her for living a life before he met her. But to me, it’s even more disturbing that his anger melts when she explains that basically, she had to act out sexually because her husband did something that killed her baby and made it impossible for her to have children. Suddenly, he stops judging her and forgives her for her less than immaculate past immediately, the implication being that it is permissible and normal for women to have strong feelings about having children. It is proper for her to desire a baby. Note, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with her desire for babies. I strongly wanted children myself.
My point is that I find it creepy that this confession from her suddenly makes everything okay. He no longer feels the need to punish her. It’s just creepy and weird that he ever thought he had that right in the first place. It’s hard not to watch and think that he first views her as a bad woman because of her unfaithfulness to her husband, but then he forgives her when he learns that she was motivated by the “natural” desire for motherhood. She has to reveal a deep, highly personal trauma in order for him to stop throwing a tantrum on the beach, blaming her for (alleged) behavior that literally has nothing to do with him.
Lancaster’s character initially puzzled me a great deal. For a long time, I found it strange that he would risk his career by going out of his way to pursue his commanding officer’s wife when he could pursue literally anyone else without risking his career. It’s not as if his commanding officer tells him, “Keep my wife entertained and distracted while I go off philandering.” Nothing throws them together. He deliberately seeks her out and pursues her. I would never do that. It puts his career (and quality of life) at incredible risk, so it’s hard not to assume it’s self-sabotage. I kept asking myself, “Is he acting out because his boss is so corrupt and useless, and he resents and despises him?” It’s hard not to read it that way, to get the idea that for Lancaster, the affair is a lot more about Captain Holmes than about Karen.
But at least with Lancaster, we get to see his story explored on screen much more. Our opinion of him is changed and refined as we see and hear more from him throughout the film. I wish we got these extra moments with Karen, too. Of course, even what we see of Lancaster seems somehow inadequate given the intense, powerful look we’re given at Montgomery Clift’s Prewitt. Perhaps this is simply because Clift is giving a better performance, but I’m not sure.
And I’d really love more material convincing me that the sergeant and Karen are actually in love, showing me why that love is so powerful and meaningful to them. For me, their storyline was easily the weakest and least satisfying. And since they’re the pair that gets all the iconic embraces in the crashing waves, I wish it hadn’t been that way.
Overall:
“Nobody ever lies about being lonely.” That line Montgomery Clift delivers to Donna Reed made a strong impression on me last night. I’m not sure I believe it. (I mean, watch out for serial killers!) But this movie does give us a fascinating look at people seeking what they lack in fleeting, doomed relationships with others. I enjoyed it, and it sits fairly high on my daughter’s list of rankings, #10 of 26.