Fred Zinnemann
From here to Eternity

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY!

Who has seen it? Well, in the end, maybe not many since it's a film from '53... but who has heard of it? Well, maybe everyone or almost everyone.

By Fred Zinnemann, one of the most esteemed American directors of all time, who just the year before had directed HIGH NOON, for example.

This timeless Hollywood classic won the Oscar for Best Picture and boasts an absolutely remarkable cast: Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Frank Sinatra, Ernest Borgnine, Deborah Kerr, who engage in a performance competition, where the first two, Burt and Montgomery, stand out magnificently.

In particular, read about the story of Clift, along with Marlon Brando, one of the first "modern" actors from the Actor Studio school, handsome, tormented, disliked by the old guard of the star system, as talented as he was unfortunate, devastated by a car accident at 36 and dead at 46 from depression and morphine.

Based on the 1951 novel of the same name, and set in 1941, a few months before the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the film tells the story of Private Robert Prewitt (Clift), who is transferred from the Bugle Corps to Fort Shafter.

Captain Dana Holmes, knowing about his previous boxing career, tries to persuade him to participate in the regiment's boxing tournament, promising him a promotion if he wins, but he refuses for reasons he prefers to keep to himself. Hoping that the soldier will relent, Holmes and Sergeant Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster) do everything they can to make life difficult for Prew, who is supported only by Angelo Maggio (Frank Sinatra), another soldier with whom he forms a brotherly friendship... adding to the complexity will be the love both Warden and Prewitt (Burt and Montgomery) find with two "difficult" but determined women, who sketch the archetype of the modern woman, fragile but resolute, honest, sincere, and in love—a wholly American model, a longing for "perfection," if you will... A love that will be defeated...

The film, let's be clear, is extraordinary. With surgical precision, a linear progression, without hitches, 118 minutes of great cinema, in this very similar to Peyton Place but even superior in technical quality, in filmic body.

Alcohol, cigarettes, dames, brawls, the rigid and ironclad military laws, unforgettable sequences, milestones of cinema of all time. The kiss of Milton and Karen on the strand overwhelmed by the surf, Robert playing the trumpet, the soldier's blues, the harassments in the barracks... and finally, the Japanese will attack.

From the standpoint of the staging, I can only admire and bow face to the ground like a Muslim in a mosque.

But what are my thoughts on the "message"? Well, since my positions are at the antipodes, to say the least, I can do nothing but disapprove with all my being of the blatant USA propaganda, where the country, the uniform, comes first, even before your person, love, family, anything. A message pushed with unusual power, with Prewitt dying a hero he was the best soldier I ever met... but who to my eyes appears as a poor fool, so much so that I was not only not moved, as the film intended, but I thought "serves you right, idiot."

Because, for me, the true hero is the deserter, and, mind you, not the coward who flees when the going gets tough and abandons the field, but the deserter who says no a priori, who does 10 years of hard labor rather than go to war or who is dragged before the martial court and executed.