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From Here to Eternity |  | Director: Fred Zinnemann
Actors: Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Donna Reed, Frank Sinatra
Studio: Sony Pictures
Category: DVD
List Price: $14.94
Buy Used: $4.92
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Rating:  93 reviews
Format: Black & White, Closed-captioned, DVD, NTSC
Language: English (Original Language)
Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Region: 99
Aspect Ratio: 1.33:1
Number Of Discs: 1
Running Time: 118 Minutes
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.2
Dimensions (in): 7.5 x 5.3 x 0.6
MPN: COLD05319D
Model: 9531
ISBN: 0800178831
UPC: 043396053199
EAN: 9780800178833
Theatrical Release Date: 1953
Release Date: October 23, 2001
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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Product Description
An all-star cast brought what was considered an unfilmable novel to the screen with skill and grace with this story of the loves, hopes and dreams of those in a close-knit Army barracks in Hawaii shortly before the attack on Pearl Harbor. Montgomery Clift portrays a former boxer who refuses to fight after blinding a friend in the ring and is sent to the remote outpost as punishment for his insubordination. Love and tragedy abound in this unflattering look at military life and American thought before the war. Based on the novel by James Jones.
Amazon.com essential video
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 (both of whom won Oscars for their work) 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
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Showing reviews 1-5 of 93
 Involving Military Soap Opera Elevated by Sturdy Performances from an Offbeat Cast August 17, 2009
Ed Uyeshima (San Francisco, CA USA)
In hindsight, this 1953 classic doesn't seem as much a military drama as it does a highly charged soap opera, which shouldn't come as a surprise given that master filmmaker Fred Zinnemann (The Nun's Story) was at the helm. The veteran director upended the western genre just a year earlier with the Gary Cooper classic High Noon, and he places the same incendiary focus of character over action here, that is, until the inevitable climax which uses the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as a catharsis for the characters' dilemmas now dwarfed by the coming world war.
Based on James Jones' epic novel, screenwriter Daniel Taradash manages to reduce the complexity of the book's themes without trivializing them, and then-offbeat casting enhances the movie immeasurably. Set on a U.S. Army base in Hawaii in the months leading up to the attack, the focus is on two men, both dedicated to the military with no aspirations to become the officers they have grown to detest. One is Private Robert E. Prewitt, a talented boxer (and bugler) who refuses to fight on his regiment's team since blinding a sparring partner. The other is First Sergeant Milton Warden, a take-charge, professional soldier who earns the trust of his men even as he kowtows to his weak-willed commanding officer.
Life in the barracks is fraught with adversarial personalities, chief among them Private Angelo Maggio, Prewitt's loudmouthed best friend, and Staff Sergeant "Fatso" Judson, the sadistic stockade warden. Both Prewitt and Warden meet women who seek to change their lives. Prewitt finds cynical nightclub "hostess" Lorene at a brothel masquerading as a social club, while Warden embarks on a passionate affair with his commanding officer's wayward wife Karen. Burt Lancaster is well cast as Warden, and he brings surprising nuance to his character's clandestine encounters with Karen. However, it's Montgomery Clift - despite looking too slight to be genuinely believable as a boxer - who transcends his loner role by playing off his innately sensitive nature to portray a man who will never sacrifice his honor despite how dire the consequences. Well within his comfort zone, Frank Sinatra's turn as Maggio is small but impactful.
Still two years away from Marty, Ernest Borgnine makes Judson's malevolence palpable in just a few scenes. Deborah Kerr submerges her Scottish accent and previous lady-like demeanor to reveal the embittered, sexually assertive side of Karen without sacrificing any of the character's vulnerability. The legendary, much-parodied beach scene with Lancaster still sizzles after all these years. Similarly, Donna Reed foregoes her good-girl image (epitomized by her memorable turn as Mary Bailey in It's a Wonderful Life) to play the sultry, delusional Lorene. The 2003 DVD comes with a small set of extras - a three-minute making-of retrospective short, a nine-minute collection of on-set footage and interviews from a documentary entitled "Fred Zinnemann: As I See It", and the original theatrical trailer. The best extra is the commentary track from Tim Zinnemann (the director's son) and screenwriter Alvin Sargent (Spider-Man 2), who had a small role in the movie.
Gazing at stars July 4, 2009
H. Schneider (window seat)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I am spending some time on July 4th with American movie classics. Fred Zinnemann's film version of James Jones' novel about the last days before Pearl Harbour in an army outfit in a Hawaii barracks is great Hollywood.
But really, Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr are not doing their stuff in the surf while the bombs are falling, as the DVD cover seems to suggest by mounting the surf tumble together with the bomber squad. That's annoying.
Apart from the stupid DVD cover I have not much to complain about.
Well, maybe one might observe that Frank Sinatra's part and his acting are not really all that great. As everyone knows from the Godfather, Sinatra got his part through connections... of course Puzo didn't really prove his claim, but it does sound plausible.
The rest is bright shining honest star-based professional cinema. Clift, Lancaster, and the 2 girls Kerr and Reed are just too true to be good. Marvellous show. And Borgnine as the evil one.
Hollywood rarely got much better.
(The star deduction is for the DVD cover photo and for Sinatra's make believe performance.)
Pearl Harbor Background for Human Destinies May 4, 2009
Antonio Robert (Slovakia, Europe)
Sweeping Oscars in 1953, this war drama becomes truly war at the very end, when the two main characters - brave soldiers played by Burt Lancaster and Montgomery Clift - are along with their female darlings caught in the fire of 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. One of the first US movies to deal with this blow dealt by Japan, "From Here to Eternity" nevertheless pushed forward the boundaries for various topics in film, having come not ahead of its time, but right at the nick of it. Frankness in intimate relationships, violence and army abuse are tackled with realism unheard-of before. The film has somehow got dated with time, but it still is carried on broad shoulders of Burt Lancaster, whose steaming beach encounter with Deborah Kerr (wife of his superior) remains among the most memorable love scenes ever put on the screen. Another main character, Robert E.Lee Prewitt (then bright young star Clift), is the centerpiece of the story. The talented boxer and bugle-man, who nevertheless has his own code of conduct, becomes an outcast of the army machinery despite his very desirable soldier qualities. The role of his friend Maggio brought a Best Supporting Oscar to Frank Sinatra, who allegedly got the role thanks to his underworld connections. Donna Reed (It's A Wonderful Life) won her Oscar for supporting actress as Prewitt's flame Alma, a luxurious prostitute whose only dream is to return home with the money and live a "decent" life. The film also got six more Academy Awards (total eight of 13 noms), including Best Picture and Best Director for Fred Zinnemann (High Noon, A Man for All Seasons).
From Here to a Classic August 22, 2008
Diva Di (Chicago, IL)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
From Here to Eternity is more than the classic scene of Deborah Kerr and Burt Lancaster rolling around on a beach, covered in ocean waves. It's a story about America during World War II. It's about human beings trying to live normal lives during an abnormal time. Taking place just before the bombing of Pearl Harbor, this is more than a war movie. It's a human story of love, honor, humor, and hope. Anyone who enjoys real-life drama will appreciate this well-written and well-acted story.From Here to Eternity (Superbit Collection)
 Doesn't hold up well with time August 13, 2008
Roger Long (Port Clinton, OH USA)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Seeing this movie again after 50 years I felt a certain disappointment. There were just too many difficulties to overcome when this was made, all owing to the strict censorship of the time.
(1) The realistic, if very profane, language spoken by soldiers could not be used in the 1950s. The language of the novel was a big departure in popular American fiction, and the movies had not caught up with readers.
(2) The extra-marital affairs were treated somewhat mysteriously. Sex scenes are either eliminated or indicated by crashing waves. If the movie goer didn't know the "code," some scenes were lost.
(3) The Donna Reed character was a prostitute in the book, but in the movie she was like a USO hostess who never ever went upstairs with the boys. This takes away from the angst Prewitt feels about her.
(4) The violence was substantially downplayed, especially in the alley knife fight and in the long fistfight, where the men land haymakers and no one has so much as a bloody nose or a fat lip. Hollywood has never staged a realistic fight.
(5) The captain is forced to resign for his evil doing, but in the book he is praised by his superiors. The Army wouldn't allow the use of their facilities without this "correction."
This is a brief overview of the problems. If this were to be remade today, it would be much grittier and much more realistic. There are some good moments, such as the Pearl Harbor attack, but they are not enough to erase the flaws.
Showing reviews 1-5 of 93
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