Not My Kind Of Movie

Rating: 8/10 (18 December 2011)

I generally enjoy older movies (it's a generation thing) but this one touches upon subject matter that really doesn't interest me at all.
It's a bit of a kitchen-sink drama really, given a military setting. There's a company commander who has lost interest in his wife and goes a-philandering at every opportunity. Meantime, his wife - surrounded by any amount of available masculinity - does likewise. She opts for his top sergeant on this occasion. There's a new transfer to his company who is a bugler and capable boxer, but who has forsworn boxing on account of blinding his friend in the past. He won't box for the company, so his CO decides to give him grief. Whilst on leave he gets the hots for a sort of club-hostess down town. Meantime his friend makes an enemy of the stockade sergeant, only to get thrown in the stockade. That's about it.
I don't mean to trivialise it. Crikey; this movie won 8 Oscars including Best Picture for 1953. There's a top-drawer cast of the day including Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra and Deborah Kerr. They all play their parts to perfection. It's just that the minutiae of US military life has never interested me at all, and neither has (other people's) sexual infidelity. Every character takes themselves far too seriously for my tastes. I wouldn't have fitted in to their lifestyles at all. But Zinnemann gives us a very believable, claustrophobic presentation of the pettiness and triviality of human endeavour, and non of it is particularly flattering.
It's Hawaii. And it's set as a prelude to the attack on Pearl harbour. The attack comes. We see about 4 planes fly over. That's about it. And that's what I mean about pettiness & trivia; the most outrageous sneak attack in modern history that led to thousands of American casualties and the loss of all the capital ships of USA's Pacific fleet (less aircraft carriers) is little more than a footnote in a movie that both agonises and luxuriates about desire & adultery for over an hour and a half. The priorities seem confused.
Still; you pays yer money and takes yer choice. It's a magnificent movie about the littleness of human purpose. And it ain't my scene.