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| Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) and Sergeant Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster) in From Here to Eternity (1953). DoP: Burnett Guffey. D: Fred Zinnemann. |
From Here to Eternity (1953) is the film adaptation of James Jones's sprawling 950-page novel of the same name. Set on Oahu, Hawaii, in 1941, it tells the story of Robert E. Lee Prewitt, an Army soldier whose strange blend of individualism, a lofty moral code, and devotion to the Army leads him into one bind after another. The novel, which I haven't read, is reputed to be borderline pornography, graphically depicting sex and violence while using all the swear words imaginable. Screenwriter Daniel Taradash had the challenging job of bringing this novel to the screen. Ironically, From Here to Eternity has been a favorite movie of mine since I was a kid.
The movie was filmed entirely on location on Oahu.
Before director Fred Zinnemann got hold of the project, no one in the film or book industries thought a film version of the novel could be made that would get past the censors. Libraries around the country had banned the novel. James Jones himself tried and failed to adapt it. Because I haven't read the book, I don't know what the movie omitted. I can testify, however, that I have seen the movie at least fifteen times. It stands on its own and has no obvious holes in the plot nor in the development of any character. It is a great movie. Including Best Picture and Best Director, From Here to Eternity won 8 Oscars, equaling Gone with the Wind (1939) for the most Oscars won by any film up to that time.
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Burnett Guffey was the Director of Photography on this film. He won one of its 8 Oscars, for Best Cinematography. Before Guffey became a cinematographer and director of photography he was a long-time camera operator. Though uncredited, he worked as a camera operator on John Ford's The Informer (1935), Alfred Hitchcock's Foreign Correspondent (1940), he helped photograph That Hamilton Woman (1941) with Laurence Olivier and Vivien Leigh and Cover Girl (1944) with Rita Hayworth, among other films.
As a cinematographer or director of photography his credits include All the King's Men (1949), In a Lonely Place (1950), From Here to Eternity (1953), Human Desire (1953), The Harder They Fall (1956), Birdman of Alcatraz (1962), and Bonnie and Clyde (1967), for which he won his second Oscar for Best Cinematography.
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Once upon a time there was a great prejudice in Hollywood. No, I don't mean any of the obvious ones. They're too obvious and they're still there. No, I mean prejudices like the prejudice that stage actors had against film-only actors and the one that film actors had against TV actors. The prejudice at issue here was the one that traditional film and stage actors had against "the method" of the Actors Studio.
Montgomery Clift was a triple threat to Hollywood's leading men who played alongside him. He was a great actor, already having a reputation for greatness and intensity on the set. He was rumored to be gay (he was), which, in those bigoted close-minded times, would've freaked out the men he worked with who weren't gay. And he was a "method" actor.
Burt Lancaster was so intimidated by Clift's reputation and presence on the set that in their first scene together, he was visibly shaking. Years later, Clift also inadvertently intimidated Clark Gable and Marilyn Monroe with his intensity and his acting ability during the filming of The Misfits (1961). Oscar-winning co-star Donna Reed described Clift's concentration on the set of From Here to Eternity as "positively violent." For their performances in this film, both Clift and Lancaster earned Oscar nominations for Best Actor.
If you've seen some of Lancaster's movies, you know that intensity is one of the hallmarks of his performances. But all that intensity is consciously expressed as he pretends to be the character in the script. In the "method," an actor doesn't pretend to be a character: he becomes the character, as though demonically possessed by it. At which point, when delivering lines, he isn't pretending: he's being himself. The transformation of an actor from a guy just doing a job to becoming a completely different person can be jolting. Clift became so completely Prewitt that months after filming ended he confided in friends he was finding it impossible to let go of Prewitt and he still carried his bugle around and wore Aloha shirts.
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Lancaster was a traditional actor and a "pro." In acting-speak "pro" means—at the very least—the actor gets to the set on time, knows his or her lines (and maybe everybody else's), gives something a little different with every take, hits all marks, and is not disruptive in any way.
Lancaster never drank alcohol. On the other hand, Frank Sinatra and Clift frequently went out drinking after work and would've been late to the set most days if Lancaster hadn't taken it upon himself to get those two to the set every morning, on time. For years afterward, Sinatra—whose performance in this film earned him an Oscar for Best Supporting Actor—sent Lancaster an annual Mother's Day card.
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Lancaster had been an acrobat before becoming an actor. Most of his roles took some advantage of his athleticism, and he did all his own stunts well into his fifties. He had a rope in his office, suspended straight down to the floor from some kind of steel housing bolted to the ceiling. Every day, once a day, he would sit on the office floor with the end of the rope in front of him, and while remaining in a seated position pull himself up to the ceiling hand-over-hand and then let himself down to the floor the same way.
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Fred Zinnemann seems to have had two careers as a director, the first as a short film specialist and a second as a feature film director. He was nominated for an Oscar as Best Director 8 times and won 3, one of them being From Here to Eternity.
His list of credits, after he switched from shorts to features, is impressive, and includes, The Search (1948) with a young Montgomery Clift making his screen debut; The Men (1950) with a young Marlon Brando making his own screen debut; High Noon (1952) for which he should've won an Oscar; The Member of the Wedding (1952) with Julie Harris; From Here to Eternity, which earned him his first feature-film Oscar; Oklahoma! (1955) with Gordon MacRae and Shirley Jones in her first feature film role; A Hatful of Rain (1957) with Eva Marie Saint; The Nun's Story (1959) with Audrey Hepburn; The Sundowners (1960) reuniting himself with Deborah Kerr; A Man for All Seasons (1966) with Paul Scofield and Robert Shaw, for which Zinnemann won a pair of Oscars, one for Best Director and one for Best Picture, which went to him as producer; and his edge-of-your-seat thriller, The Day of the Jackel (1968) with Edward Fox.
