OSCAR WILD DAY 7: FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)

While I can usually see what the masses see in acclaimed films, whether I like them or not, every now and then a film comes along that just baffles me. I simply don’t see what people loved about this film. Sure, there’s the famous scene of an adulterous couple embracing and kissing on the beach as waves roll up around them, but it’s become an out-of-context cliché. With context in place, the scene had little impact on me, nor did the rest of the film.

While the setting may look like paradise, some of the soldiers at an Oahu barracks experience anything but. Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) is hazed and harassed by his commanding officers in an attempt to wear down his reluctance to joining their boxing team. His only friend, Private Angelo Maggio (Frank Sinatra) find himself on the wrong side of his superiors as well, courtesy of his defiant nature. Meanwhile, First Sergeant Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster) makes his feelings known for his commanding officer’s wife (Deborah Kerr), and they begin a secret affair.

While Sinatra’s character is mostly sympathetic because he is targeted by a pretty twisted disciplinarian, I couldn’t appreciate or support Lancaster’s Warden. Sure, Karen is stuck in a loveless marriage to a cheating husband, but there is something off-putting about the way Warden strolls up to her house and all but forces himself upon her. Had there been a build-up of mutual attraction, I could go along with it, but it’s all very one-sided at first, as if he has to wear down her resistance to the notion matching her husband’s infidelity with a little of her own.

And then there is Montgomery Clift. This is still the only of his films that I have seen, so my sample size is distorted, but his performance here suggests that he takes Method acting too far. Much of the time he seems to be acting through his eyes. He channels so much intensity through his eyes that it’s distracting and it hampers him from giving his role additional emotional depth. Clift was a contemporary of Brando, whose Method approach I am familiar with. Clift goes far beyond that of Brando, and this makes the character of Prewitt feel like he belongs in a completely different movie.

The book this film was adapted from was likewise a big hit. When researching both, I couldn’t find anything suggesting the appeal of either had anything to do with the gritty and unseemly portrayal of barracks life. From Here to Eternity presents a world that clashes with the notion of brotherhood among soldiers and the rigid moral norms that we associate with the 1940s. Reality tells us that rough edges and morally ambiguous people have existed throughout time, so perhaps this film is trying to tear down the rose-colored glasses notion of what the past seemed to be. It surprises me that so much against-the-grain content was tolerated in the Hays Code era of content and idea censorship, but that doesn’t make up for the fact that the allure of this film continues to elude me.

FINAL SCORE: 2.75 out of 5