Great traditional melodrama fun

Rating: 8/10 (10 October 2002)

Solid story, script, photography, and acting in a melodramatic tale set around the time of Pearl Harbor in 1941. The guys are in the army, with Lancaster at his best as a no-nonsense sergeant in love with his Captain's wife (Kerr, who also shines). Clift is also lovestruck, but with a "nice" prostitute with an assumed name who refuses to marry a soldier. Clift's suffering and Kerr and Lancaster's sad doomed love affair (condemned to die by the production code, if nothing else) make for a compelling film -- Sinatra's bit which won him an Oscar is overrated, as he overacts ferociously.