From
Here to Eternity (1953)
Starring
Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, Frank
Sinatra
Director
Fred Zinnemann
Awards
Academy Awards
Best Cinematography - Burnett
Guffey
Best Director - Fred Zinnemann
Best Screenplay - Daniel Taradash
Best Supporting Actor - Fran
Sinatra
Best Supporting Actress - Donna
Reed
Film Notes
"Here's a model for adapting a novel into a movie. The
bestseller by James Jones, a frank and hard-hitting look at military life, could not
possibly be made into a film in 1953 without considerably altering its length and bold
subject matter. Yet screenwriter Daniel Taradash and director Fred Zinnemann pared it down
and cleaned it up, without losing the essential texture of Jones's tapestry. The setting
is an army base in Hawaii in 1941. Montgomery Clift, in a superb performance, plays a
bugler who refuses to fight for the company boxing team; he has reasons for giving up the
sport. His refusal results in harsh treatment from the company commander, whose bored wife
(Deborah Kerr) is having an affair with the tough-but-fair sergeant (Burt Lancaster). You
remember, the scene with the two of them embracing on the beach, as the surf crashes in.
The supporting players are as good as the leads: Frank Sinatra and Donna Reed won Oscars
(and Sinatra revitalized his entire career), and Ernest Borgnine entered the gallery of
all-time movie villains, as the stockade sergeant who makes Sinatra miserable. Zinnemann's
work is efficient but also evocative, capturing the time and place beautifully, the
tropical breezes as well as the lazy prewar indulgence. This one is deservedly a
classic." (Robert Horton, Amazon.com)
Rated: NR