From Here to Eternity

Last month I discussed a western movie called Shane, which was nominated for four Academy Awards (Best Picture, Best Director, and two for Best Supporting Actor) which it lost to the film I want to talk about today, From Here to Eternity.  I remember being eight years-old when my family and I went to the Oswego Theater to see this hit movie, which won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 1953.  It was directed by Fred Zinnemann (won Academy Award for Best Director), and starred Montgomery Clift (nominated for Best Actor, but lost to William Holden in Stalag 17), Burt Lancaster (also nominated for Best Actor and also lost to William Holden in Stalag 17), Deborah Kerr (nominated for Best Actress, but lost to Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday), Frank Sinatra (won Academy Award for Best Supporting Actor), Donna Reed (won Academy Award for Best Supporting Actress), Philip Ober, and Ernest Borgnine.  It also won the Academy Awards for Best Writing - Screenplay, Best Cinematography (Black-and-White), and Best Film Editing (seven Academy Awards in all).

That day in 1953 I sat glued to my seat fascinated by this complicated tale of the lives of several men and women in and around the US military on the Hawaiian Island of Oahu just before the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor.  I can especially remember one scene in which Lancaster is talking on the phone, leaning up against a wall with a calendar showing the date, Saturday, December 6, 1941.  Even then, I knew what would happen the next day.

In the beginning, Private Prewitt (Clift) transfers from a mainland base to a rifle company at Schofield Barracks in Hawaii.  He previously had a reputation as a very good boxer.  As such, Prewitt’s commanding officer, Captain Holmes (Ober), tries to force him to join the company boxing team on its way to winning a championship.  As he previously blinded a friend in the ring, Prewitt has quit boxing.  However, in order to change Prewitt’s mind, Holmes encourages the team members, all non-commissioned officers, to make his life miserable by giving him a lot of extra and unnecessary duties.  Their attempts prove unsuccessful as Prewitt is determined not to box (“a hard head”).  In order to get some relaxation as a result of his ordeal, he goes with his friend Maggio (Sinatra) to a gentlemen’s club in Honolulu where he meets Lorene (Reed), whom he falls in love with.

Meanwhile, Captain Holmes’s top sargeant, Warden (Lancaster), is attracted to his boss’s wife, Karen (Kerr).  At the risk of twenty years in a military prison, Warden makes a date with Karen, who is miserable in her marriage to her unfaithful husband.  They go for a swim at night on a remote beach.  There is a scene which is perhaps the most romantic in movie history.  Your eyes take in a powerful wave rolling up the beach where Warden and Karen are lying, embraced and kissing as the wave washes over them.  They separate and he pursues her.  They kiss again and their affair blossoms, albeit in deep secrecy.      

Meanwhile, Maggio gets into trouble, picking a fight in a bar with the Sargeant of the Guard at the stockade, Fatso Judson (Borgnine).  When Maggio is later arrested for going AWOL while on guard duty, he is sentenced to six months in the stockade.  While there, Maggio is physically abused by Judson, but escapes by hiding on a truck leaving the stockade.  However, during such escape he falls off the truck and suffers fatal injuries.  Before dying, he finds his friend Prewitt and tells him of the inhuman treatment he received at the hands of Fatso Judson. 

Prewitt avenges Maggio by killing Judson in a knife fight.  However, Prewitt is seriously wounded himself and seeks refuge at the home of his girlfriend, Lorene, going AWOL.  When the Japanese attack Pearl Harbor on the day of infamy, the still-injured Prewitt, feeling guilty and desiring to join the fight against the enemy, decides he must return to his unit.  While on his way back after dark (he knows a shortcut through a golf course), and bleeding from his previously-inflicted wounds, he is shot and killed by American sentries fearing an invasion by Japanese soldiers.

In the end, Karen and Lorene meet on a cruise ship leaving Hawaii for the mainland.  Their loves are lost.  For Lorene, Prewitt is dead.  For Karen,  Warden is fighting the Japanese, while her husband, whom she will grudgingly stay with, was forced to resign from the Army because of his ill-treatment of Prewitt.  Ironically, the boxing tournament he was so keen on winning was cancelled because of the war.