From Here to Eternity (1953)

The performances transcend the film's tropes, grounding it in characters that feel more complete than this subgenre often produces.

I cannot think of one single thing that I would change about this film. The acting is incomparable, the directing deft, and the writing poignantly brilliant.

Through painfully honest and emotional moments, the movie becomes irresistibly relatable

what a terribly boring film. I'm sorry but this is absolutely not deserving of best picture and will be forgotten quickly. Entertaining and engaging cinema? No. Nothing performances with flat faces and mistaking silence for subtlety.

I suppose that FROM HERE TO ETERNITY can best be described as the FULL METAL JACKET of the 1950s. It stars the eternally youthful Montgomery Clift (fresh from playing the role of the tormented priest in Hitchcock's I CONFESS) as a raw army recruit based in Hawaii during World War 2 who is subjected to endless bullying and bad behaviour for an unlikely reason: in peacetime Clift was an amateur boxing champion, and his superiors want him to join the army boxing team, but he refuses due to personal circumstances.It's a slight premise but as a film FROM HERE TO ETERNITY works very well indeed, in fact achieving the status of something of a classic. That's because it has real narrative depth and various sub-plots that interact in ways both expected and unexpected. The film boasts from a gritty realism and a lack of sentimentality that means not all of the characters are going to have happy endings. Frank Sinatra shines in the role of a brash young recruit who falls foul of Ernest Borgnine in a star-making performance as a bully. Burt Lancaster is the weary sergeant trying to hold everything together. The story climaxes with the attack on Pearl Harbor, portrayed in a way that is just as powerful as you could hope for.

Hawaii, late-1941. We see the lives of a few men at an Army base, in particular Private Prewett, Sergeant Warden and Private Maggio. They have their lives and loves. All their stories will come to a head on 7 December when they will be first hand witnesses to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor.Every bit the classic it is made out to be. Good script, containing many plots and sub-plots, running in parallel, culminating in the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. Solid direction from Fred Zinnemann.Superb performances by a great cast: Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed and Frank Sinatra - all five of them got Oscar nominations with Reed winning Best Supporting Actress and Sinatra Best Supporting Actor. The cast also includes early-career appearances by Jack Warden and Ernest Borgnine.The movie itself won the 1954 Best Picture Oscar and director Fred Zinnemann won Best Director. It finished with a total of 8 wins and another 5 nominations.

This was the darling of 1953, winning a whole slew of Oscars and several more nominations. One of the Oscars went to Sinatra for Best Supporting Actor. Most of us remember Sinatra for his singing but he was a fine actor with 64 roles credited to him.This story takes place in Hawaii in 1941 on an Army base, just a few months before the eventual December 7th surprise attack of Pearl Harbor, the event that got the USA into WW2 against the Japanese. There is a boxing theme running through it, with the military championships scheduled for December 15th, and we know that will be upstaged.Burt Lancaster in his early 40s is the lead as Sgt. Milton Warden. He is confident and runs a tight ship, but he also has his eye on the pretty girls, one in particular, the wife of his commanding officer. It seems pretty well known that the officer routinely cheats on his wife so that makes the pursuit somewhat logical. Deborah Kerr in her early 30s plays that woman, Karen Holmes. The second main story involves Montgomery Clift as Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt, a former boxer who quit after a man he knocked over was badly injured and lost his sight. So he was transferred to Hawaii and ceaselessly harassed by men in his platoon trying to get him to change his mind and fight on the team.In his Oscar role Frank Sinatra was Angelo Maggio, a little guy with a big heart but who drank too much. In a bar another man, Ernest Borgnine as Sgt. 'Fatso' Judson, insulted Angelo's mother so Angelo hit Fatso over the head with a chair. The fight was broken up but later when Angelo was thrown in the brig for deserting his guard post, under the 'care' of Fatso, it eventually led to Angelo's death.The last scenes in the movie depict the attack of December 7th and it appears that some real news footage of the attack was used.Several good stories are woven in and while I haven't seen the movies this was competing against I can understand why it was then and still is considered such a timeless movie.

I never saw this movie until just a few years ago, and, again, over the 2015 Memorial Day Weekend, because I thought it was just another love story...but, it's much deeper and much more complicated than that.It 'is' a love story of new, dangerous, and, impractical love, but, it's also about personal problems; playing favorites and manipulation in the military; people finding themselves in places and situations they hadn't intended on and don't like; and, all at a time when the world was about to change forever.The star-studded cast is superb, although, ironically, 'many of them' were not first choice by the studio head. The characters are solid and each has just the right type of personality to make the story believable when they interact and create intriguing situations.I feel kind of silly for having missed out on this terrific movie for all these years (as I also did with "The Bridges of Madison County" - another I thought was 'just another love story.'). From now on, I'll watch a movie when advised to.This is a great classic movie that 'everyone' should see at least once.