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Submitted by: Thomas Whitehead
The boldest book of our time… honestly and fearlessly on screen , screamed the movie posters for Fred Zinneman’s 1953 adaptation of James Jones acclaimed novel concerned with army life on a Hawaiian base after the pear harbour attacks.
The film holds up well, it is considered something of a classic and is noted for one of the most famous scenes of all time in cinema history. This scene is probably as bold as the film can get, with Burt Lancaster’s trunks pulled up way high and Deborah Kerr flailing around on top of him. This is about as bold as the film gets, and true enough it’s a racy scene, and certainly of its time quite out there, the scene in the novel was rather more grunty.
This scene has become the defining moment of the film, the image on the DVD cover and the scene most parodied, popping up in the spoof classic Airplane!
While the scene may not have such an effect on a modern audience, with the refinement of censorship laws and so forth, there is still a thrill to the adultery. To many children this was their first confrontation with a film made for adults, there is Kerr as the uptight, virginal British woman overcome with Lancaster’s muscular physique. And then there is Donna Reed playing a prostitute.
So in theses regards it is a formative picture, challenging the characters portrayed on screen. That’s before even approaching the male characters, the menace of Ernest Borgnine and Frank Sinatra was really quite edgy, especially when you consider them as military characters, this is a rare sight on the screen in this period of screen history.
Then of course there is the Hollywood legend famously featured in The Godfather, regarding how Frank Sinatra got his role, the famous myth of the horse’s head in a producer’s bed.
Yet as far as the content of the book is concerned the film is a rather timid adaptation. There are no tales here of the American soldiers performing sexual favours for a beer money contribution. Of course that doesn’t happen in fifties movies, it seldom happens in contemporary movies.
James Jones’s day may have been and gone, along with money of his fellow Parisian American expatriates. Yet his canon is still a highly regarded one, one that has been particularly lucky in its treatment in transferring to the big screen.
He was also fortunate with Vincente Minelli’s Some Came Running, which was a huge hit in its day. There was a flop within the adaptations with the Old Red Lion being made unsuccessfully twice.
Now perhaps it is a good time to reconsider remaking From Here to Eternity, yes it may be a classic, but there also exists in there an edgy cult movie waiting to be made, standing alone from the 50s movie. Perhaps a HBO series, it is certainly their kind of territory.
Of the major influences of the film is its role in attracting tourists from America to Hawaii rentals. Now long after the world war Hawaii is one of the world’s favourite vacation spots.
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