From Here to Eternity
With Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr.
US, 1953, 35mm, black & white, 118 min.
Lancaster found his biggest role of the Fifties leading Fred Zinnemann's rapturously celebrated and multiple Oscar-winning adaptation of James Jones's best-selling WWII epic set in a US Army base in Honolulu during the days leading up to Pearl Harbor. Seen today, From Here to Eternity is perhaps most remarkable for its stinging pessimism about American exceptionalism and its unvarnished critique of military hubris and blind hierarchy. As an uber-male career officer trying to be just within a system he knows is rigged – and while willfully falling in love with his superior's restless wife – Lancaster brings together the film's unprecedentedly frank depiction of adultery, power abuse and shattered dreams. Interweaving torrid melodrama with a cracked version of the service film, From Here to Eternity offers a sobering reassessment of the stakes and costs of the Second World War on the American psyche.
Part of film series
Screenings from this program
Sweet Smell of Success
Brute Force
The Rose Tattoo
The Crimson Pirate
Ulzana's Raid
Conversation Piece
From Here to Eternity
Twilight’s Last Gleaming
I Walk Alone
The Leopard
The Killers
Atlantic City
Criss Cross
Kiss the Blood Off My Hands
The Train
Vera Cruz
The Swimmer
Run Silent Run Deep
A Child Is Waiting
Judgment at Nuremberg
