This is a very good wartime soap opera--with a stronger emphasis on love than on war. The film stars a strong cast and all try very hard to make this an exceptional film. Burt Lancaster was very good as the 1st sergeant and Frank Sinatra was surprisingly good as a hot-headed G.I.--so much so, that this film rescued his flagging film career. The female love interests of Donna Reed and Deborah Kerr were also good--and Ms. Kerr did a good job of creating an American accent. However, for the life of me I cannot understand the decision to cast Montgomery Clift as Private Prewitt. While he was generally a good actor and did well in movies such as THE SEARCH, he was totally wrong for this part. I am assuming his recent popularity was the sole reason he was given this part, because physically he was all wrong. Clift played a guy who was supposedly a great middle-weight boxer--despite him being a very thin and delicate man who looked like he would have had a hard time beating Ms. Reed in a fight, let alone beat up two savage sergeants like he did in the movie. This appears to be yet another case of someone being cast for a role purely because he was a hot commodity at the time.

Fortunately, aside from one bad casting decision, the film was excellent--blending romance and wartime well and making for a very entertaining film. While not as great as you might expect from a film that earned so many Oscars, it is nevertheless an exceptional film.

FYI--The Japanese planes in the movie are actually American Texan trainers and SBD Dauntless bombers. Apparently there weren't any flight-worthy Japanese planes available, so the airplanes attacking Pearl Harbor are American ones!

I personally consider The Nun's Story as Fred Zinnermann's best film, but From Here to Eternity is another one of his best efforts. It is very powerful, with themes of bullying, sadism and adultery giving away to themes of heroism and sacrifice. The cinematography is stunning, the direction is great and the screenplay is really brilliantly written and powerful. The acting is superb too, none of the actors ranging from Burt Lancaster to Deborah Kerr, from Montgomary Clift to Frank Sinatra and Ernest Borgnine give a bad performance. In some ways the characters can be seen as stereotypes, Lancaster's macho Sergeant, Kerr's unhappy wife, Clift's reluctant boxer, Sinatra's persecuted Italian GI and Borgnine's sadistic stockade sergeant, but the performances and the depth the script goes to developing them ensure that the characters are much more than that. From Here to Eternity also contains one of the most iconic clinches in cinema with Lancaster and Kerr embracing in the pounding surf. Overall, powerful and very well acted film from Fred Zinnermann. 9/10 Bethany Cox

Fred Zinnemann's "From Here to Eternity" is really more of a soap opera than a war story. Still, it is very well done, and very entertaining. The main attraction isn't World War II, or the soap opera story lines - the main attractions in "From Here to Eternity" are the actors' performances.

Montgomery Clift's is the "main attraction" performance. He makes his character the central figure, despite other story lines, and his performance is mesmerizing. Every look Clift gives, every facial tic, every syllable is fascinating to watch. And, it's all very natural… very character-driven. Not that all the others aren't terrific, too. Burt Lancaster is a close second, and everyone performs exceptionally well.

Mr. Clift's performance helps elevate both the other performances, and the film in general. Check out how great he makes all the other actors, "look" simply by playing a bugle. This is a case where an actor's performance affects both the other players in the scene, and even leaves its impressions in scenes where the actor doesn't appear. If you take Clift out of the film, you have a much more ordinary movie.

I'm not sure, however, what/if the film is trying to say about war - is it making a statement of some kind? The main story is: Will Mr. Clift's character box (fight)… or, won't he fight (box)? I guess he is bullied into fighting, but does not initiate fighting (he blinds a man, symbolically, by knocking him out in an unseen fight). I am not sure if I got the film's message, or even if there was one.

I would have also made either MORE EXPLICIT or MORE SUBTLE the whole prostitution part - it was a place to have sex during the time, I guess. Donna Reed and the other women were prostitutes, I guess. Since they couldn't make it more explicit, they toned it down to make us really think these men went to town so they could exchange "nice" smiles with "nice" women. Elsewhere, Mr. Lancaster and Ms. Kerr's sound like they've had physical relations, when, it looked, to me, like they'd only been hit by a wave. I know this was the '50s, but filmmakers had developed many subtle ways of relaying this information… for the prior half century...

So, what it boils down to: This is a great wartime soap opera, with great performances.

********* From Here to Eternity (8/5/53) Fred Zinnemann ~ Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, Frank Sinatra, Deborah Kerr