So many actors and so many small moments build to a huge, dramatic reminder of the truth of it all

Rating: 8/10 (9 August 2010)

From Here to Eternity (1953)
If you take out the last fifteen minutes, you have a terrific drama about an ill trained U.S. Army and some of the inside rivalries and chicaneries that go on with so many trapped and sometimes ambitious men. The number of stars is breathtaking, and there are so many subplots, they are needed to keep every section of the movie sharp, which it is. That's one marvel here, is that all these disparate parts make sense and have equal power.
Montgomery Clift takes on the most tragic of the men, and the most obviously brutalized. And yet, in that way he has of being vulnerable and steadfast, he makes you really feel for him. Burt Lancaster as the good sergeant is steely and strong in that way we admire, and Frank Sinatra is given another of those roles that make him a likable nice guy who gets in trouble for the good of others. Throw in Ernest Borgnine and Jack Warden, and a host of secondary actors in top form.
There are two women with roles, and both shine. Deborah Kerr, in particular, gives what might be her most intense and satisfying performance, edgy and filled with inner anguish we never see. And Donna Reed plays a men's club companion girl, and she is rarely so alive and interesting.
Everyone represents a type, and a larger scene is painted of lonely army men hoping for something to do, either in their work or in their love lives. One theme is rampant drinking, another is a culture of no escape. It's oppressive but it's the army, and they seem to enjoy life anyway.
But then the end comes around. Pearl Harbor. It was all set in Hawaii and I should have known. I've even seen the movie before but I had forgotten completely (partly because there is a 1953 brightness to the filming, and I was thinking this was post-WWII). But it happens, and it's really moving. There are no heroics, no great war stories to be told, just a bunch of regular guys, some with hangovers, having to suddenly fight, and die, for their country. In fact, the closing scene, a brave one, really, is emblematic of the real truth to a lot of what was to come.