Time is not always kind to classic films

Rating: 6/10 (23 June 2009)

Some films are classics in their time, some films are classics for all time. From Here to Eternity is more the former than the latter. When you watch the film you can see why it may have been so highly acclaimed upon its release, why it was awarded a bushel of Oscars. But you can also see that it has clearly not aged as well as some other notable films of its era. To the modern eye it's more soap opera than classic film. And often a rather hokey soap opera at that. It's a film with a style which struggles to convince all these decades later.
The plot unfolds in an Army barracks in Hawaii in 1941. Army. Hawaii. 1941. No prizes for guessing where this story is ultimately headed. But this is really not a war story, it is more than anything else the personal story of one soldier, Robert E. Lee Prewitt. Montgomery Clift plays Prewitt who has been newly transferred to the barracks. What drives Prewitt's story? He once was a talented boxer but he doesn't fight anymore. His commanding officer wants him to fight on the company boxing team and Prewitt refuses. The officer and members of the boxing team thus set out to make Prewitt's life as miserable and difficult as possible. And that is the story at the center of the film. If you think that sounds rather trivial you'd be correct. In the grand scheme of things, especially considering the time and place, are we really supposed to care all that much about some Army boxing team? The rest of the story deals mostly with some romantic entanglements and that is where the soap opera aspect comes into play. We have Deborah Kerr playing the commanding officer's wife and she's a woman who gets around if you get my meaning. Donna Reed of all people plays a prostitute but this is a film made in 1953 so we're not actually going to call her a prostitute. She's a "hostess" in a club but what her hosting duties entail is quite clear. But she's one of those movie hookers with a heart of gold and she falls for Prewitt. Meanwhile Kerr's character's current affair sees her involved with Sergeant Milton Warden who happens to work directly under her husband. Actually it's Warden who really seems to be running things at the barracks as the commanding officer is much too busy carrying on his own affairs. It's quite the tangled web. Oh and there's Frank Sinatra too, hamming it up as Private Angelo Maggio, a rather entertaining drunk whose character seems to be there for comic relief until things take an abrupt turn and we all of a sudden are asked to take him seriously.
All in all it's quite the soapy melodrama. Prewitt is at the heart of the picture and Clift does a fine job in portraying the put-upon soldier. Probably the best performance in the film comes from Burt Lancaster playing Sergeant Warden but even Lancaster is not immune from the moments of overacting which this film has all too many of. The women are mostly shunted to the side. Kerr doesn't have much to do. Reed makes a bit more of an impression but the story really belongs to the Army men all the way. And at times it is hard to really take that story all that seriously. The story certainly has its dramatic moments but at its heart it's all about a soldier being abused...because he won't join a boxing team? And there are the love affairs which seem better suited for modern daytime television. And Prewitt's story does not really pay itself off satisfactorily which is a problem since the film has spent its whole running time trying to get us to invest our emotions in Prewitt's fate. The end result is a bit of a letdown. This is not a bad film by any means but it certainly has its share of flaws. In its time it may have been a true classic. But some films do not age as well as others.