A Fine Showcase for Montgomery Clift

Rating: 8/10 (6 April 2011)

In 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his captain's wife and second in command are falling in love.
This film is all Clift, and his homosexuality. Clift's character refuses to fight, is accused of being a "lone wolf"... his lack of manliness is evident. This is again a curiosity when Sinatra asks Clift, "do you have any prejudices against girls"? Clift's sexy bugle playing is very homoerotic with the way he thrusts his hips at the other men. Harry Cohn resisted the idea of casting Montgomery Clift as Prewitt as "he was no soldier, no boxer and probably a homosexual". Fred Zinnemann refused to make the film without him. And now we have this classic story of a gay man at Pearl Harbor.
I love the emotions during the iconic beach scene, which fluctuates between romantic and antagonistic, vacillating between playfully suggesting a woman is a man-eater and outright calling her a floozy.