From Here to Eternity (1953)
Decided to start watching all of the Oscar best picture winners, in order. I hadn’t heard of some of these movies, some I love and have seen multiple times already and I actively hate others, planning to never watch them again. Fair warning, there will be spoilers in these and other reviews to help explain my point of view.
Watching this movie felt like an eternity. This one was almost as boring as The Greatest Show on Earth, but at ;east had an interesting final 10 minutes, once Pearl Harbor was attacked by the Japanese.
I suppose I shouldn't have been surprised by how boring this movie is since they only impression it has made on popular culture is the extremely brief beach scene that pretty much everyone has seen: Burt Lancaster’s First Sergeant Milton Warden and Deborah Kerr’s Karen Holmes kissing on the sand while the surf washes over them one moonlit night. This scene isn’t romantic though; Karen is the wife of Milton’s captain, so they must sneak around and are under constant threat of discovery (and court martial for Milton). Karen wants Milton to become an officer so she can get a divorce and marry Milton, but he remains resistant to this throughout the movie, as he despises officers and would rather die than become one himself.
Frank Sinatra is also in this movie, although why is beyond me. His character is useless, must have had a contract that forced him to be in this otherwise, I can’t explain it. The other main character is Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt, portrayed by Montgomery Clift. Prewitt is a screw up, constantly doing everything wrong, earning extra punishment and threat of a court martial. Eventually, he goes AWOL after killing a fellow soldier in back alley fight, then ends up getting shot by MPs as he attempts to re-join his unit following the air strike by Japan.
The movie just ends, with Karen and Prewitt’s girlfriend Alma (Donna Reed), talking on a ship as they head back to the mainland. Alma tells Karen lies about Prewitt and how he died, then the movie ends, leaving me confused.
What was the actual point of this movie? The Army, after having cooperated with the studio as they made the film, didn’t like the finished product, and the Navy also discredited it, thinking it reflected poorly on the armed services. I couldn’t agree more. None of the soldiers came across as likeable or sympathetic, all seeming to hate their time in the military, even those that were career men and therefore could have resigned at any time since the U.S. wasn’t at war until the very end of the movie. Perhaps if this film had been made in a different time, without the forced changes from the book to comply with the Hays code and the Army’s demands, it would have been richer with more depth, rather than the surface film it actually is, giving us nothing but bitter soldiers and the women who love them. The performances were good, so I can’t blame the actors. The material is the film’s weakness, therefore this one goes into the pile with the others I’ve watched so far that I don’t think deserve their Oscar. 1.5 out of 5 stars.
