This powerful story begins with many of the most intense events of the past in an army barracks in Hawaii in the days before the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941. The story began with a man who refused to participate in boxing for the unity of his team. In the end, the man finds the wife of his leader and the second man in the leadership fall in love to no avail, which may change his mind.
The result is a gripping movie that often makes you wish its director, Zinnemann, knew as much about American life as he does about the art of telling a story with a camera.
Fred Zinnemann's strength as a director was less on the technical side and more in line with coaxing stellar performances out of his actors, and with this film, he drew a royal flush.
Watching it again after not seeing it for many years, I was also struck by how much of a debt novelist-screenwriter Donn Pearce ('Cool Hand Luke') owes to Jones.
The cast includes Frank Sinatra, Montgomery Clift and Ernest Borgnine, all of whom are fine, in what is essentially a melodrama.
We Got This Covered
September 30, 2013
Despite sliding into melodrama a bit too often, From Here to Eternity remains a decent film due to the strong performances of its Oscar-nominated cast.
The film is anonymously directed, functionally paced and hysterical at times, though it seduces as a hot-blooded spectacle that stitches emotional detail onto the epic canvas of history.
