From Here to Eternity (1953), Dir. Fred Zinnemann
Starring: Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Frank Sinatra
This Oscar-winning military drama is set at a Hawaiian military base just before the outbreak of the second World War - and accordingly, the attack on Pearl Harbor. Michael Bay should have taken note and canned his scrap-heap of a big budget movie about Pearl Harbor, because Zinnemann's 1953 film does it with more heart, humanity, and panache then he could ever manage. There are a lot of misleading ideas surrounding the movie - mainly due to the iconic image of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr kissing in the surf. The film isn't really terribly focused on the romance, and the famous moment only lasts a few seconds. The film also isn't really about Pearl Harbor, as such, and by the time the world-shaking events occur, the audience is so wrapped up in the very human dramas of regular life at the military outpost that the attack seems oddly surprising. Montgomery Clift, supposed precursor to Brando and Dean, is much less mannered than the latter two, and much more subtle - perhaps more watchable by today's standards. He had a wonderful presence and an injured, repressed quality that got attention but never begged for it. Sinatra is a mischievous but good-hearted friend, strangely skinny-shouldered and ratty standing next to athletic Lancaster and fine-featured Clift. As a modern viewer, one can't help but to pick up on the underlying patriotism and occasional narrative schmaltz that make up a prestige picture like this one, but nonetheless, it is one of uncommonly good scripting, actors, and director. It criticises the poor treatment of lower-ranked men by the officers' ranks, and speaks to the violence, drunkenness, and general corruption of domestic military life, but never takes far-reaching steps to extend this critique toward the government, or to allow its characters anything but unwavering loyalty to their military, in spite of their poor treatment. The film ends with a wistful scene on a steamboat between Deborah Kerr and Montgomery Clift's lover, Donna Reed, talking about their wayward men. As the camera pans down to the sea beneath them, we get the sense that in 1941, on the precipice of war, a great many more young women would soon be talking just as wistfully about the military men in their lives.