From Here to Eternity (1953)
Directed by Fred Zinnemann
In 1941 Hawaii, a private is cruelly punished for not boxing on his unit's team, while his captain's wife and second in command are falling in love.
15 connections found
View:
15 connections, in both directions
What critics compared From Here to Eternity to
Watching the movie is like sitting next to an ADD patient with access to a remote control and a hundred premium cable channels; you could try to keep count as the images flicker by, but ultimately it's a pointless exercise as they're piled one on top of the other--as the From Here to Eternity joke just as quickly becomes a Little Mermaid punch line immediately gives way to a Lord of the Rings nod that rapidly evolves into a Spider-Man gag.
True, the pop- culture and movie in- jokes are more manic and come faster than in Shrek; and while the references to things like The Lord of the Rings and Ghostbusters aren’t entirely unexpected, who’d have imagined nods to From Here to Eternity or The Fabulous Baker Boys?
After a roll in the waves recalling Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr ’s sultry clinch in From Here to Eternity, they discover there’s trouble in paradise, and its name is in-laws.
Not even Eddie Murphy as Donkey can get off a good one, so you might spend this part of the movie reflecting on how computer animation makes humans look creepy and creepy things look human, or perhaps count the gratuitous movie references (From Here to Eternity and The Sound of Music, and many others, are tapped before we even get to the fart joke).
As a result, Pearl Harbor constantly reminds you of other, better movies (yes, even From Here to Eternity) -- but only for a second, because then he's off to something else.
Lovelorn soldiers stationed in Hawaii have their romantic lives torn asunder when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor: you can add remaking Fred Zinnemann's Oscar-winning From Here to Eternity without due credit to the tally of Pearl Harbor 's wickedness, although a picture as cool and sensitive--the two qualities exactly lacking from Pearl Harbor --as From Here to Eternity would hardly want the acknowledgment.
As a matter of fact, there is more than passing borrowing from that Spielberg film, James Cameron's "Titanic," "From Here to Eternity" and a myriad of Hollywood war movies from the 40's and 50's.
And as a searing personal drama about an ensemble of characters whose lives are caught up in the events of Dec. 7, 1941, it's a pale shadow of one of the most celebrated movies of all time: 1953's "From Here to Eternity."
People carouse and drink on Dec. 6, 1941, as if they're in "From Here to Eternity."
Although Andrew Garfield is winning as Doss, oddly these scenes are among Gibson's – and the movie's – weakest, feeling like leftovers from "From Here to Eternity," as the private is bullied and abused.
In the basic-training section, where Doss is abused by his fellow soldiers — lots of echoes of “From Here to Eternity” here — Gibson sets up the mixed-platoon format familiar from countless war movies (there’s the Italian-American, the country boy, the bully, etc.).
Portrayed by Andrew Garfield with an astonishing soulfulness that recalls Montgomery Clift in From Here to Eternity, Doss was a devout Seventh-day Adventist who declined a religious exemption that would allow him to avoid military service.
Tarantino sets his film in the months leading up to the murders of Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), Jay Sebring (Emile Hirsch), Abby Folger (Samantha Robinson), and Wojciech Frykowski (Costa Ronin) in much the same vein as Fred Zinnemann sets From Here to Eternity in the weeks presaging Pearl Harbor: the looming of the Event of is so oppressive and doom-laden it casts a pall on those incredible glimpses of L.A. in the era of Musso & Franks and the Taft Building and the Cocoanut Grove.
Advertisement
Unless you've read the book, it might not be obvious when this story takes place, but once WWII hits Japan, the movie becomes something different, more like a wartime romance in the vein of "From Here to Eternity."
At times Phoenix’s Freddie hearkens back to Montgomery Clift in “From Here to Eternity,” to name another James Jones tale.
Freddie gets drunk on torpedo engine fuel, grinds atop a sand mound shaped like a naked woman on the beach (a From Here to Eternity quote?) and masturbates into the ocean.
The most classically minded of America's young filmmakers, and the most prodigious, Anderson draws on John Huston and Elia Kazan, Fred Zinnemann's "From Here to Eternity" and George Stevens' "A Place in the Sun."
But the deleted material will end up on the DVD, and at the end of the day the film magically evokes the impact and spell of the novel -- and the completed trilogy compares with "Gone With the Wind" and "From Here to Eternity" as the screen's most successful literary adaptations.
The movie is on the heroic scale of earlier pictures on broad themes, such as “On the Waterfront,” “From Here to Eternity,” and “The Nun’s Story.”
Advertisement
Right out of the gate, Kleiser humorously appends the 1955 Oscar-winning song "Love Is a Many Splendored Thing" to a love montage with a beach setting that evokes 1953's From Here to Eternity.
At another point, a wave crashes on Pratt and Howard just like “From Here to Eternity” (1953).