If you don’t have patience with From Here To Eternity, you might pass judgement too soon, concluding that it’s just another 1950s melodrama. There’s evidence early on that supports such a view. First, there’s the appearance that this is a typical Shane-like story of a quiet outsider (Private Robert E. Lee Pruitt, played by Montgomery Clift, who has just transferred to a Hawaiian military base and is being pressured to join the base boxing team). And then it seems that the main conflict is going to be between Pruitt and a typical one-dimensional villainous company commander, Captain Dana Holmes (Philip Ober), who is boxing coach, so has a particular interest in Pruitt and his refusal to box. In addition, first impressions are that the supporting characters are just the usual assortment of military stereotypes: the hyper-efficient but cynical sergeant (Milton Warden, played by Burt Lancaster), the wisecracking little guy who befriends the outcast Pruitt (Angelo Maggio, played by Frank Sinatra), and so on.

If you reach your conclusions about a film after its first few minutes, then you’ll have From Here To Eternity all wrong, because – while there are a few unfortunate storyline compromises in the adaptation from James Jones’ novel that reduce the film’s bite – it remains a powerful commentary on the military world, and one that’s packed with fascinating characters and compelling subplots. The story of Private Pruitt – while at the centre of the film – is just one of several personal stories that touch on important issues. There’s adultery, as Holmes’ lonely wife Karen (Deborah Kerr) is constantly seeking a substitute for the love that’s absent from her marriage. There’s social class, which is an issue to party girl Lorene (Donna Reed, whose role would have been that of a prostitute if the censors had allowed it), who is befriended by the working class Pruitt. There are choices to be made between loyalty to the armed forces and loyalty to a woman – a key issue for Warden, who Karen observes is ‘married’ to the army. And there’s the conflict between conformity and standing up for what you believe, a pricey choice for Maggio, who first backs up Pruitt against the company goons and then takes on the loutish stockade sergeant (Ernest Borgnine).

While it’s set on the eve of the Pearl Harbor invasion, From Here To Eternity has less to do with the Second World War than it does with the stress of social change – something that was jump-started by the onset of war. Packed with implicit criticism of the military milieu, the film would have been even more controversial if director Fred Zinnemann had been allowed to retain the original ending (in which Captain Holmes is rewarded by the military for his brutishness and incompetence, rather than punished as he is in the final version of the film). But even with that and several other compromises to please the military and buy their co-operation in the movie’s making, this is a powerful film.

There are plenty of strong performances. Clift’s low-key acting style works well in his portrayal of Pruitt, who really just wants to be left alone. Lancaster – whose surf-washed love scene with Kerr is one of the most famous ever put on film – takes a potentially cardboard character and makes him complex. Both were both nominated for the Best Actor Oscar, as was Kerr on the female side, but it was the supporting players who brought home the hardware – Sinatra as the slightly obnoxious but loveable Maggio and Reed as the would-be social climbing ‘club hostess’.

Brian Webster

DVD version:

The DVD provides a very nice and clean transfer of the film in its original black and white non-widescreen format, with sound in Dolby digital mono in the original English and dubbed into French, Spanish and Portuguese. Subtitles are provided in English, French, Spanish, Portuguese, Chinese, Korean and Thai. Extras on the disc include a full-length audio commentary by director Fred Zinnemann’s son Tim and Alvin Sargent, a bit-part player in the film and later a screenwriter. Neither is really qualified to speak about the film with great authority, but their conversation is still modestly interesting, even if they do rarely refer to the events that are happening onscreen. There is a token two-minute ‘featurette,’ supposedly on the making of the film. It’s really just a few narrated home movie clips made by Zinnemann during filming of the movie. More significant is a nine-minute excerpt from the film, “Fred Zinnemann: As I See It,” which provides some of the director’s comments about the production. There are trailers for this movie and two other Columbia war movies (The Guns of Navarone and The Bridge on the River Kwai), filmographies for five of the actors, Zinnemann and screenwriter Daniel Tardash, and a couple of pages of reasonably interesting production notes printed in the DVD’s glossy insert.

Directed by Fred Zinnemann
Stars Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, Frank Sinatra, Philip Ober, Mickey Shaughnessy, Harry Bellaver, Ernest Borgnine, Jack Warden, John Dennis (I), Merle Travis, Tim Ryan (I), Arthur Keegan, Barbara Morrison, Claude Akins
Studio/distributor: Columbia TriStar