Evan D. As a project this year we are taking a trip through time to revisit all of the Best Picture winners in history, Wings to Anora. From Here to Eternity is the twenty-sixth film in that series, to see all the other Best Picture reviews, click here. Set in 1941 among the Army units stationed at Hawaii, it is never hard to see where From Here to Eternity is headed. It can however be easy to forget. Before the “Date that Will Live in Infamy” arrives, director Fred Zinnemann has so thoroughly engrossed viewers in the lives of the service members depicted that the attack on Pearl Harbor still manages to surprise. More than a narrative gimmick, From Here to Eternity uses its setting to impressively reframe the strife of day to day life in the barracks.
After being slighted in the bugle corps, Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) transfers to a rifle unit stationed in Hawaii. Officially headed by the philandering and absentee Captain Holmes (Philip Ober), the unit is really operated by 1st Sergeant Warden (Burt Lancaster). The work is monotonous and dull, most of the regiment is more interested in the upcoming Army boxing tournament, especially as the winning team gets an additional 10 weeks of leave. It is no wonder then that the whole group is aghast when Prewitt, a former middleweight ace, refuses to box. Holmes and nearly the entirety of the unit come down on Prewitt with an iron fist. He is denied weekend passes, assigned extra work and physically confronted by higher ranking soldiers. Only Private Angelo Maggio (a spirited and impressive Frank Sinatra) is willing to stick out his neck for Prewitt and the two become fast friends. Courageous contrarianism, along with excessive drunkenness, come to define Maggio and lead to a great deal of troubles for him on the island. Warden too begins to sympathize with the retired middleweight as he starts to see bravery in his defiance. Much of the focus in From Here to Eternity lies upon the romantic entanglements of the soldiers. Prewitt falls hard for Alma (Donna Reed), a paid companion at a club downtown. Meanwhile Warden is striking up romance with the Captain’s wife, Karen (Deborah Kerr) behind his back. Both affairs place their participants into difficult predicaments that threaten to upend their lives. It’s tremendously effective drama. Each of the characters feels like a genuine person, messy and sometimes irrational. Prewitt’s refusal to box and the treatment he endures for it reveals something fascinating about him but also the power dynamics wielded in the military. Although both Karen and Alma are supporting characters and love interests to the male leads, they are fully developed people with their own ambitions and motivations, something that was not altogether common for the era. Their relationships with Warden and Prewitt complicate their decision making rather than defining it. Then comes the attack on Pearl Harbor. Stitched together from the film’s production and military footage of the actual event, the attack sequence is intensely realized. It also serves an important role in resetting the context of everything that came before. The boxing finals that had served as rationalization for Prewitt’s mistreatment were canceled as the country prepared for imminent war. All of a sudden singleminded obsession with boxing, illicit affairs, petty rivalry with bar patrons begin to wilt under the looming shadow of World War II. Hardly a new notion, From Here to Eternity is still one of the great examples of film contextualizing daily dramas to profound effect. Well crafted and superbly acted, it is one of Best Picture Winners that deserves more attention than history has provided it. 8/10
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