Rent From Here to Eternity (1953)

A slice of humanity - From Here to Eternity review by JK

The opening scene of square-bashing squaddies didn't bode well as I'm not a fan of American 'WW2' films (and how they, invariably won it). I'm glad, though, I stayed with this film, as, 30 seconds in, the characters began to emerge and what sympathetic, well rounded characters they were.

These were the days when things were 'implied'; We didn't need to see Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr having sex in reality - as appears to be graphically necessary nowadays - because we sort of knew what was going to happen anyway so a wave crashing onto the beach gave us the clue we needed. Similarly, the fight scene between Ernest Borgnine and Montgommery Clift didn't rely on mountains of tomato sauce and gut-wrenching horror because, just be seeing a pair of feet twitch we, the viewers, could use our imaginations as to what had happened.

So little is left to the audiences' imagination these days it's no wonder people spend their cinema time stuffing their faces with popcorn and texting their friends!

Although long, this really is a classic film and well worth watching as the storyline is gripping, the acting (especially from a young Frank Sinatra) is superb, the music - both atmospherically and played by various characters is just right for the setting and being in black and white, the photography is superb.

Classic Hollywood Drama - From Here to Eternity review by GI

Adapted from James Jones' celebrated novel this Hollywood classic drama set at an Army base on Hawaii in 1941 is a fantastic, intense and highly satisfying film. Considered very raunchy for it's time the narrative has two central romances. Burt Lancaster is the cynical 1st Sergeant who runs the whole show whilst having a very passionate affair with the Company Commander's wife played by Deborah Kerr. But the central story is of Montgomery Clift's 'Prew' a private soldier who refuses to box for the Company team and is bullied ruthlessly on the Commander's orders. He finds solace in the arms of a beautiful prostitute played wonderfully by Donna Reed. The film climaxes with the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour, mixing real footage of the attack with models work. With Frank Sinatra, Ernest Borgnine and a host of familiar character actors this is a story of forbidden love, loyalty and courage. It won a load of awards not least eight Oscars including best film. It's a film that deserves a modern audience, it's most definitely one to seek out if you've never seen it.

Of Bawls and Brawls; Bugle and Bungle - From Here to Eternity review by CH

“Have you brought an adding machine?” It gives nothing away to say that From Here to Eternity (1953) contains a famous beach scene in which, as the waves break on the shore, Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr grasp one another upon their clothes. Less often recalled is this line of dialogue. Why, in the throes of passion with his superior's wife, should a Sergeant feel the need of so mundane a device? Then again, this is a film in which, for all the current events at an Army base in Hawaii in the early part of 1941, all those involved have a backstory (as they say).

Lancaster's been told that Deborah Kerr has been free with her favours while she and her husband were at another posting; meanwhile Montgomery Clift has sought a transfer after killing somebody in one of the service's boxing bouts; first glimpsed with a broom in his hand, Frank Sinatra is as much a bundle of insecurities as his bête noire, Ernest Borgnine who runs a prison with, literally a rod of iron; and the beach scene is intercut with an encounter at the New Congress Club, which is aptly named, for its staff are prostitutes, including Donna Reed who is saving to return to the mainland and the life of respectability which had been hers before being jilted at what she has assumed would be the altar.

All this, and more, two hours of it, was adapted by Daniel Taradash from James Jones's novel, one of those sprawling late-Forties novels which tried to make sense of everything through which the country had been put before the Bomb dropped and all our woe.

As directed by Fred Zinnemann in effective black and white, it is, for all the bawling marching exercises, a big-screen chamber drama. Scene after scene, even a bar-room brawl, takes place in confined space, notably the night-time moment when Sinatra and Clift hug each other, almost passionately, one last time. This is accomplished film-making, of which Manny Farber said at the time, it “happens to be fourteen-carat entertainment. The main trouble is that it is too entertaining for a film in which love affairs flounder, one sweet guy is beaten to death, and a man of high principles is taken for a saboteur and killed on a golf course”.

And yet, Farber, like anybody who sees it, was gripped (as one is by Lumet's equally pounding The Hill a decade later). How one should like to leap From Here to 1953 and listen to talk, in the bar afterwards, and learn from the discussions between those who had elected upon it as something through which to hold hands on a date-night. Did it foster argument or passion? Or both?

What surprised audiences at the time is that the seemingly innocent Deborah Kerr took on a salacious rôle. Of course, we now know, from Michael Powell's memoirs, that in Thirties England he had a similar encounter with her, albeit not upon a beach but on a rug in front of a lodging house's gas-fire. We shall never know whether this went though her mind when asked about the adding machine.