Monty Clift's greatest role?

Rating: 9/10 (8 July 2003)

Fred Zinnemann's epic about the lead-up to Pearl Harbor, featuring excellent performances from young Montgomery Clift and Donna Reed, a knockout role for Sinatra, and that roll in the surf for Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr.
From Here to Eternity is a potboiler which wears its heart on its sleeve. Would it have been the same with Joan Crawford instead of Kerr? Hard to say. I think the heart of the film is Clift, who gives perhaps his career best as ex-boxer Prewitt, the sensitive bugle player fighting his demons. Lancaster is a close second, a hard-boiled officer with no time for love.
One of the best of the 50s, and well worth watching.