THE EMPIRE MASTERPIECE
From Here To Eternity
FRED ZINNEMANN’S RICH, ROMANTIC WORLD WA R II EPIC
WORDS CHRISTINA NEWLAND
YOU KNOW THE scene, even if you don’t know the film: a black-and-white image of a man and woman entangled on a Hawaiian beach, passionately kissing as the waves wash over them and a swell of lush, romantic, orchestral music rises to a crescendo. The man is Burt Lancaster as the athletic and powerful Sgt Warden; Deborah Kerr is Karen Holmes, Warden’s senior officer’s unhappy wife. Their adulterous affair plays out, sensual and full of yearning, against the backdrop of a military base where tragedy lies in wait. It’s a scene that raised pulses at the time, and remains one of the most famous images in movie history. But there’s much more to From Here To Eternity than romance and rolling around in the surf.
In 1953, a little over a decade after the events of the Japanese surprise attack at Pearl Harbor, Hollywood decided to tackle the “date which will live in infamy” —sensitive subject matter given the relative recency of the tragic events, where over 2,000 soldiers and civilians were killed. Adapted from a bestselling novel of the same name by James Jones, himself a veteran whose book closely followed his real experiences, the film is not simply a patriotic recounting of the events which led America into the Second World War. It easily could have been. But the man who made it a psychologically complex romantic drama, who took an interest in granular everyday military life before the explosive attack, was director Fred Zinnemann. From Here To Eternity was never going to be a pedestrian war picture.