"From Here to Eternity" (1953) - Dirty soldiers 1950s style!

This is another classic we’d been looking forward to watching where overall the background and gossip surrounding production were more interesting than the film itself.

First off, just so you know, the iconic scene on the beach between Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster that has been emulated by everyone from Madonna (in her ‘Cherish’ video) to Bolle sunglasses is really not that integral to the plot. Those guys aren’t even the main protagonists; they’re more of a heavily edited side story.

The main action is based on the novel by James Jones and takes place in Hawaii just before the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbour. We follows the indomitable Montgomery Clift’s character as he is bullied into boxing at his new army posting and an array of side characters that demonstrate a darker side to the US Army than the 1950s audience would have been used to.

The acting is quite compelling and the parts of the story that actually made it to the big screen are interesting but I would have really liked to seen the less-censored version! To get it past the Army (and ensure their help in production) key locations, events and outcomes had to be altered (e.g., changing a brothel to a nightclub and showing the broken bureaucracy of the Army higher ups being addressed and amended). But in true classic fashion, the best drama was all going on behind the scenes…

Montgomery Clift was his usual intense and method self on set, learning to play the bugle and move like a boxer and actually getting drunk for scenes that required his character to be drunk( although given that he was a lifelong alcoholic – that may not have been purely for the part!)

Despite the studio having severe reservations about the non-soldier ‘probably homosexual’ actor playing this role, he delivers a really honest and riveting performance. In another casting controversy, this is supposedly also the movie that Frank Sinatra got a little ‘wink wink nudge nudge/offer they couldn’t refuse’ help to land the part of the irascible 'only my friends can call me a wop' Private Maggio (as fictionalised in ‘The Godfather’).

Whatever the politics that went into this film getting made, we’re glad it did, it was entertaining, if a little too long and scored respectably for such a sanitised story. I gave it 59 and Mat scored it 61. (I may have taken off points for the film’s role in popularising Hawaiian shirts!)