The 1950s spawned three dreadful films that won best picture Oscars—and two despicable ones: Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity and Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront. It appals that anyone should think that Zinnemann’s film is other than vicious or stupid and, in either case, evil.
The film’s source indicts the military and its mindset; scenarist Daniel Taradash and Zinnemann cheaply, dishonestly and with breathtaking arrogance turned the intent of James Jones’s novel inside out. This was the outcome of a series of alterations to the text. One example: Captain Holmes at Schofield Barracks, Honolulu, who organizes the campaign of persecution against Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt when the latter refuses to box for the company, is promoted in the novel; in the film, however, he is forced to resign, thus ending the military career that Holmes had hoped Prewitt’s boxing would advance. The implication is that the U.S. Army operates benignly to weed out unfairness, corruption, and abuse of authority. Oh: the U.S. Army assisted Zinnemann during the shoot!
The drama is set in 1941; the Japanese bombing which brought the U.S. into World War II is part of the action, along with two romantic relationships, and various internal conflicts and one interior one. During the Korean War, Zinnemann lacked the courage to make an anti-war film as John Huston—what a great spirit!—had done two years earlier with The Red Badge of Courage.
The film alternates among mostly short scenes belonging to different plot-lines, with the musical score sometimes forging a continuity.
Montgomery Clift, as Prewitt, and Deborah Kerr, as Holmes’s wife and Company First Sgt. Warden’s mistress, are both very good. Frank Sinatra gives a breezy musical-comedy performance as Pvt. Maggio, with an unconvincing death scene as coda.
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FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (Fred Zinnemann, 1953)
By grunesThe 1950s spawned three dreadful films that won best picture Oscars—and two despicable ones: Fred Zinnemann’s From Here to Eternity and Elia Kazan’s On the Waterfront. It appals that anyone should think that Zinnemann’s film is other than vicious or stupid and, in either case, evil.
The film’s source indicts the military and its mindset; scenarist Daniel Taradash and Zinnemann cheaply, dishonestly and with breathtaking arrogance turned the intent of James Jones’s novel inside out. This was the outcome of a series of alterations to the text. One example: Captain Holmes at Schofield Barracks, Honolulu, who organizes the campaign of persecution against Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt when the latter refuses to box for the company, is promoted in the novel; in the film, however, he is forced to resign, thus ending the military career that Holmes had hoped Prewitt’s boxing would advance. The implication is that the U.S. Army operates benignly to weed out unfairness, corruption, and abuse of authority. Oh: the U.S. Army assisted Zinnemann during the shoot!
The drama is set in 1941; the Japanese bombing which brought the U.S. into World War II is part of the action, along with two romantic relationships, and various internal conflicts and one interior one. During the Korean War, Zinnemann lacked the courage to make an anti-war film as John Huston—what a great spirit!—had done two years earlier with The Red Badge of Courage.
The film alternates among mostly short scenes belonging to different plot-lines, with the musical score sometimes forging a continuity.
Montgomery Clift, as Prewitt, and Deborah Kerr, as Holmes’s wife and Company First Sgt. Warden’s mistress, are both very good. Frank Sinatra gives a breezy musical-comedy performance as Pvt. Maggio, with an unconvincing death scene as coda.
This entry was posted on January 4, 2009 at 9:49 am and is filed under Formal Capsule Film Comments. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.