NFR Project: 'From Here to Eternity' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “From Here to Eternity”

Dir: Fred Zinneman

Scr: Daniel Taradash

Pho: Burnett Guffey

Ed: William A. Lyon

Premiere: Aug. 5, 1953

118 min.

For once, they made a great movie out of a great novel.

James Jones was a hell of a good writer. Everyone should read his war trilogy – From Here to Eternity (1951), The Thin Red Line (1962), and Whistle (1978). They constitute an epic saga of how war and the military make and unmake people’s souls.

Eternity was a best-seller, and somewhat controversial in its day due to its strong language and some of its subjects – prostitution, venereal disease, homosexuality. It was also thought that the novel was unadaptable to film. The book is brilliant but sprawling, restless in its examination of human behavior, beliefs, and dreams, featuring many interior monologues. Jones wrote a screenplay adaptation, but it was rejected.

Several elements of the book are toned down for the film version. The Production Code had to be followed, and the Army had to sign off on it as well. No more prostitution, venereal disease, or homosexuality. A key character is forced to resign in the film, despite the novel ironically leading him on to bigger and better things. Of course there’s no dirty talk.

However, Daniel Taradash did a brilliant, Oscar-winning job of winnowing down the novel into a streamlined yet detailed and nuanced screenplay, staying as faithful to its source as the times would permit it.

The film is staged at the actual Schofield Barracks in Hawaii. It’s the story of a man who goes against the system that he, ironically, loves. Private Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) is a gifted but stubborn bugler who transferred from his old outfit because he wasn’t being treated fairly. Unfortunately, he’s wound up in a company run by an untalented, idiotic, and lazy Captain, Holmes (Philip Ober), whose pet project is to win the regiment boxing championship. He has a bunch of noncommissioned officers under his command who are there only so that they can fight.

Holmes wants Prewitt to box. Prewitt won’t – he blinded a man in the ring and afterwards swore it off. Holmes promises him that he will be harassed and punished until he gives in. Prewitt, heroically stubborn, accepts the challenge.

The company is really run by Sergeant Milt Warden (Burt Lancaster), who is incredibly efficient and caring about his men, although he doesn’t put up with any guff. A chance meeting with his Captain’s wife Karen (Deborah Kerr) leads to the two having a passionate affair. Meanwhile, Prewitt goes on one of his rare outings on leave to the town, and in a “social club” where Lorene (Donna Reed) works. They immediately fall in love.

And then there’s Maggio (Frank Sinatra). Maggio is an oddball, loud, obnoxious, rebellious, always joking but a good fella. Maggio crosses paths at the club with the enormous and brutal Sergeant “Fatso” Judson (Ernest Borgnine). Each develops a distinct hatred for each other. Judson runs the stockade.

Prewitt, meanwhile, can’t play his instrument on base, and casually shows off his prowess on it one night in a nightclub. After a second, violent confrontation (Fatso mocks Maggio’s picture of his sister) Judson swears he will give Maggio the business if he ever falls under his command.

Karen and Warden’s affair continues. They sneak around the island together, as getting caught would mean prison for Warden. (On comes the immortal shot of the two of them kissing in the surf under the moon.) Karen reveals her life’s tragedy, and they become even closer. Karen wants Warden to become an officer, so she can divorce Capt. Holmes and marry him. Warden hates officers and does not want to become one.

Prewitt’s hazing continues. Still, he exclaims, “A man loves a thing, that don’t mean it has to love him back.”

Maggio finally gets picked up and court-martialed. He is remanded to the stockade. Fatso is waiting for him.

Prewitt explains that he is a career soldier, a “30-year man.” Lorene (Alma, actually) admits she will not marry Prewitt because she wants a “proper” husband, home, and life. She wants to be respectable. Still, she admits, she needs him.

Prewitt fights one of his tormentors on the base quadrangle. At first he holds back, refusing to hit his opponent in the face. At last he becomes enraged and beats the other guy up. Still, he insists, he won’t box. One night Warden and Prewitt get drunk together. In stumbles a mortally wounded Maggio, who has been taking beatings for months and has just escaped from the stockade. Fatally injured, Maggio dies in Prewitt’s arms.

Prewitt plays Taps that night for his barrack-mates; a slow, achingly beautiful rendition. Prewitt seeks out Fatso and fights him in an alley. Fatso is killed, but he wounds Prewitt badly in the fight. Prewitt staggers to Lorene/Alma’s, hiding out while his wound heals.

You know what happens then? World War II, that’s what happens. It’s Sunday morning, Dec. 7, 1941. Pearl Harbor is attacked, and so are Amry installations on the island, including Schofield Barracks. Warden and the men fight haphazardly. Prewitt, despite his wound, determines to get back to his unit. Sneaking among sentries that night, he is confronted and runs, leading to him being shot to death.

And that’s it. The last scene shows Karen and Lorene on a ship leaving Hawaii, both without the marriages they expected. Lorene pretends to Karen that her “fiancée” was a bomber pilot killed on the runway on Dec. 7. Karen realizes, from conversations she’s had with Warden, who Prewitt was and that this is untrue. She lets it slide. And the camera pulls in to Lorene’s hand, holding Prewitt’s bugle’s mouthpiece.

It won Best Picture, Best Director, Best Supporting Actor (Sinatra, in an achievement that reignited his popularity), Best Supporting Actress for Donna Reed, Best Screenplay, Cinematography, and Editing. There is nothing earth-shaking going on stylistically. It’s a human-sized story about grown-up people’s problems, and Zinneman gives his players room to breathe, casting them in ever-changing gradations of black and white.

The source material is searingly honest and well-observed, and the film reflects that rueful cynicism about life that the military breeds. The good guys are the lowly in rank, the working stiffs, the ones who are really dedicated to the ideals what they serve are supposed to stand for. The higher up you go, the more of a jerk you are.

In the end, a man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do. In Prewitt’s case, he bucks the system and pays the price for it. The construct simply won’t accommodate the free-thinking individual. Holmes is forced to resign – a change from the novel, which saw him get promoted. Warden continues on stoically. Who is right? Is anybody redeemed?

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: The Hitch-Hiker.

NFR Project: 'Eaux d'artifice' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “Eaux d’artifice”

Dir: Kenneth Anger

Pho: Kenneth Anger

Ed: Kenneth Anger

Premiere: 1953

12 min.

A lovely little mood piece from filmmaker Kenneth Anger, best known for his filmic explorations of gay identity and sexuality.

Here he shoots a montage centered on a figure in 18^th-Century dress wandering through the gardens and around the water fountains of the Villa d’Este in Italy. The Baroque decorations of the site are highlighted, and the film moves serenely from shot to shot, scored to the music of Vivaldi.

Anger used a little person as his costumed figure, the circus performer Carmilla Salvatorelli. This choice makes the dimensions of the gardens seem larger than they really are. The film is focused on the interplay of light and water; slow-motion cascades sparkle in the sunlight (or is it moonlight?). It’s a meditative visual poem.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: From Here to Eternity.

NFR Project: 'Duck Amuck' (1953)

 

NFR Project: “Duck Amuck”

Dir: Chuck Jones

Scr: Michael Maltese

Premiere: Feb. 28, 1953

6:53

Poor Daffy. Created by Tex Avery and Bob Clampett on April 17, 1937, he was soon to be one of cartoon history’s indelible characters – and perhaps its most unfortunate.

The Warner Brothers’ cartoon studio was by far the most imaginative and captivating of all motion-picture cartoon-crafting outfits of the period, giving us a slew of immortal characters housed in a slapstick paradise, a hilariously visualized space where the gags come thick and fast, where reality is bent, a reality in which heads flatten out and rebound upon being struck, where duck bills are blasted, spinning them to the rear and carefully swivelled back into place. The permissive atmosphere at “Termite Terrace” led to extensive, brilliant, experimental and successful comedies. Their efforts resulted in the creation of a body of animated short subjects that express the unique American comic sensibility.

The sarcastic, egotistical little black duck was born as a zany, anarchic prankster (read my essay on his first film, Porky’s Duck Hunt, here). It was a role he would play, usually with Porky Pig as his innocent foil, until 1940, when Bugs Bunny came along and took over being a witty miscreant in Leon Schlesinger’s Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoon shorts of the era.

So what’s a duck to do? Daffy turned into a much more complex character, an anti-hero usually hoisted by his own petard, a greedy, cynical coward – who regularly played Bugs’ nemesis in battles of wits staged in front of a befuddled Elmer Fudd. Bugs was cool, a consummate trickster. Daffy was an insecure, vain mess.

We watched it all, growing up, fixated on the adventures of Bugs, Daffy, Porky, Elmer and the rest. Their restless, intense artistry was engraved on our little skulls. We were children of Daffy.

The anything-goes vividness of this attack on Daffy bears the fingerprints of the immortal animator Chuck Jones, who wielded the director’s mace in most of Warner Brothers’ best cartoons. Jones was capable of pushing and crystallizing his characters’ ethos, resulting in gems such as The Rabbit of Seville, The Scarlet Pumpernickel, Duck Dodgers in the 24 ½ Century, and One Froggy Evening. This film stands as a classic beside them.

The movie is a tantalizing thought-product spawned by writer Michael Maltese, expressing a kind of existential despair about the certainties of reality. First Daffy dashes out in front of the camera, clad as a musketeer. The background disappears. Daffy appeals to us, as the acknowledged creator of the film, to put in some scenery. The artist obliges, brushing on a rural scene instead of a Gothic one. “Stand back, Musketeers, they shall sample . . . my . . . blade?” Daffy exclaims. He re-costumes himself. He is switched then to the Arctic, the tropics . . .. and back to nothingness. He complains, and is erased.

He is brought back as a cowboy singer – but there is no sound. Soon mismatched sounds come out of Daffy’s guitar and out of his mouth, culminating in him raving, “And I’ve never been so humiliated in all my life!” He begs the animators to quit kidding around. And is transformed into a misshapen creature. Then he is redrawn as himself, in a sailor suit. And let fall into the sea. He suffers from long shots and close-ups.

Finally, the darkness of the frame-edge above him droops and sags, descending like goo. Daffy fights it, goes berserk, tears it to shreds. He is doubled, and fights himself. He is given a plane to fly, and a mountain to fly into. He bails out of the plane, and is given an anvil for a parachute. Dazed and woozy in front of an abstract background, he hammers the anvil, chanting Longfellow’s “The Village Blacksmith.” The animator erases the anvil, replacing it with a bomb. Daffy strikes it until it explodes. Singed, he raves at the cartoon’s creator. “Who are you?” he screams. A door is drawn and closed upon him, and camera pulls out. The animator is Bugs. “Ain’t I a stinker?” he confides.

Daffy learns that he’s at the mercy of the animator – incapable of doing anything but rapidly adapt to the prevailing conditions. In that, he becomes an enraged existential hero. Daffy’s predicament is descended from Buster Keaton’s Sherlock Jr. (1924) dream sequence, in which Buster enters the film and flails about in the rapid and seemingly spiteful changes of scene. But Duck Amuck can go further into the absurdity, pulling aside the curtain and showing the mechanics of making a cartoon come to life – a self-referential folly that illuminates the fragility of our assumptions about reality. We all get the rug pulled out from beneath us, repeatedly, hilariously.

Duck Amuck is the ultimate expression of the rivalry between Bugs and Daffy, and Bugs is again the easy winner. His magical qualities let him transcend the cartoon page and have agency in our reality. Daffy, no matter how hard he tries, will always be the victim of fate or of himself. Jones comes close here to being the cartoon equivalent of Samuel Beckett. Identity and reality are up for grabs, and the choices are not our own. A pretty gritty statement, truth be told.

The NFR Project is one writer’s attempt to review all the films listed in the National Film Registry in chronological order. Next time: Eaux d’artifice.