them reenlistment blues

Rating: 9/10 (4 February 2017)

This is ostensibly a film about life before war breaks out - the climax (not a spoiler I don't think) is the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7th 1941 - but it's also about how much it sucks to be a man. And a woman. Actually it is not something that is too appealing it would seem to be a part of an army base during peacetime from the looks of this. The women in this world are in miserable marriages or at miserable jobs, and the guys are stuck in the same super-masculine patterns: do some boxing, trust me, Pruitt, it'll be good for you (nevermind that he blinded a guy by accident in a fight years before), and make sure to have plenty of booze when it's the nighttime.
Even the setting is deceptive: the beautiful beaches and sweet presence of Hawaii (those shirts!) are masking how if a person cant take being around other a-holes it doesn't change anything. Through this it makes for a compelling batch of stories; you have Lancaster as a sergeant who falls for the Captains wife (Deborah Kerr in a performance that is so intense at times it nears going into being too much, but she always keeps a scene and her delivery of these lines in check) and the conflict in whether to go for it in the 'after all this' thing; Pruitt (Clift), who this feels like the movie is more about than its top billed star, is filled with guilt and angst and should also be too much to take, but also finds those lines of keeping it compelling and interesting, full of pain and fury and all that, but also not going too far.
The only one who may be having 'fun' up to a point is Sinatras Maggio, who becomes the brunt of racist remarks (damn you Ernest Borgnine, who's great in his few scenes by the way and cuts a mean impression), and is the first to drown himself in booze when it becomes clear life is being much too oppressive. Though one knows how this story is leading up to its eventual conclusion, it feels more like a post war story (and it is by way of it being filmed in 53) while coming before. A guy like Maggio would've faced likely the same sort of bullies and pricks in post war life as pre, but in this world he has no escape from what this BS tough guy male world has to do to people. Or does it have to? Yeah, it does.
There are points where it likely has dated, where the hopes and aspirations for the women especially (or some of them men too) are different than it would be today or even like 20 years after the pre Pearl Harbor days. What were the options then, one has to ask, and it leads to having to take things on the context when it was made. What makes it work today from being dated is the power of the performances and that the writing is smart enough to recognize everyone as flawed to varying degrees, and that Zinneman keeps a strong hold on the dramatic tone scene to scene. If there's anything flawed its minor, like leaving the Lancaster-Kerr relationship to the wayside for a good part of the run-time until returning to that in the third act.
So if you only expect like the romance of that iconic bit on the beach you may be in for not so much disappointment but a heavier and more empathetic tale of soldiers and women and the problems in trying to be true to feelings when its not possible. Sure its a melodrama, but so what? If its done this well its worth embracing to this day, and Sinatra, Clift and Jean Arthur are worth noting for their terrific acting.