I Wish the Academy had a category 'worst adaptation form another medium'!

Rating: 7/10 (3 February 2009)

I've always thought that were it not for the accident of the timing of its birth this film might today be spoken of in the same conversations which feature 'Citizen Kane'. There are some amazing performances in this classic. If this isn't the best work Clift has ever done it certainly ranks right up there with his best and I'd have to say the same thing about Donna Reed and Frank Sinatra. Although I'd have to rank "The King and I" and "Heaven Knows, Mr. Allison" slightly above this performance of Deborah Kerr's, I emphasize the word "Slightly".
I'd probably have to have given this work a solid 10 were it not for the studio's complete mishandling of the property. This was the era of Joe McCarthy so I suppose it's expected that everyone cut Harry Cohn some slack but I have a rough time doing that. James Jones hated this film and while I can't quite share his total contempt, I also didn't have to live through seeing one of my finest works prostituted on the altar of social expediency and misguided right-wing oppression.
This was the film which instructed me about the perfidy which occurred at Pearl Harbor. It taught me the difference between being a soldier and fighting a war. I vividly remember seeing this as a pre-teen and being confused as to what the "New Congress Club" actually was. It wasn't an ordinary night club and it wasn't a brothel. In my ignorance of censorship and general juvenile naivetÃ© I finally concluded it was some sort of takeoff on the 'dime-a-dance' halls in cities of the time. Stupid me! Between sucking up to the Department of the Army and the 1950's censors Jones' work had been reduced to an insipid shadow of the book. At first I thought the studio would have been better off putting the screenplay on a shelf until an atmosphere prevailed which would allow the completion of the work as Jones intended but then we might have missed securing the services of this cast.
With the unwavering clarity of hindsight, perhaps it would have been better had the film been faithful to the novel. It wouldn't have been able to be released at the time so, like 'Kane', it would have sat on a studio shelf until a time when it could be properly appreciated.