From literature to lens

Rating: 10/10 (3 July 2020)

I read the novel long after I first saw the movie. There were surprises; it's so different it came as a shock.
It's almost as though screenwriter Daniel Taradash and director Fred Zinnemann worked from a few plot points and invented the rest. Doubtless they dissected the book quite analytically, but much that is in the film wasn't in the book or was considerably rearranged.
In the book, the characters are more complicated; more flawed; they argue and even tire of each other before the end. The movie tidied things up.
James Jones' novel was based on his experiences in the pre-WW2 U.S. Army based in Hawaii. 1953's censorship stopped many of the novel's themes from reaching the screen. Along with the gambling, anti-Semitism and racism, there was the interaction between the soldiers and Honolulu's gay community. The long sequence in the novel where Prewitt and Maggio head off to a gay bar to sponge money and booze from a couple of older gay guys went AWOL in the script.
It's a brick of a book with the characters projecting James Jones' worldview on just about everything. The raw look at the lives of the tough pre-war regular soldiers gave the book its clout, especially the treatment handed out in the stockade, but every episode seems drawn out. The filmmakers dismissed a platoon of characters to shape the brilliant screenplay.
The cast stays in the memory, Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr even Ernest Borgnine as Fatso Judson, but especially Montgomery Clift. For me, he was America's finest actor. Even after his face was smashed and his life fell apart, he could still give performances such as those in "Judgement at Nuremburg" and "The Misfits" - Brando was wary of his talents. In "Eternity" he was at the top of his game.
There is another version of "From Here to Eternity", the mini-series starring Natalie Wood, William Devane and a Steve Railsback. It's not bad and contains more from the book - the gay guys finally report for duty and we go inside the stockade. However it also used scenes from the 1953 film, which were not in the book including the bottle vs knife confrontation between Warden and Fatso Judson.
James Jones didn't like the movie. I love the movie. The book is harder to love, but it made me want to read "The Thin Red Line", a sequel of sorts.