Musicians in Movies: From Here to Eternity (Dir Fred Zinnemann, 1h58m, 1953)

September 1952. Frank Sinatra's run out of luck. He's been dropped by his record company Columbia, his concerts are half full, and his marriage to Nancy has disintegrated two years prior, His TV show has been cancelled, whilst his acting career, including three musical comedies alongside Gene Kelly have been replaced by films like Meet Danny Wilson.. But Frank's about to stage a comeback in a way few entertainers have managed since. By the end of 1954, he'll be back on Capitol, dominating the Billboard records charts, and 1955 will see him appear in four films, including commercial hit Guys and Dolls and critical darling and stark noir, The Man with the Golden Arm. He will also be an Oscar winner. 

Between the lows and the highs lies Sinatra's starring role in From Here to Eternity, based on te best-selling novel by James Jones. Sinatra plays a Italio-American soldier Maggio, a grunt. His close friend is Prewitt (Montgomery Clift), who plays a hard-headed soldier, former boxer and bugler for his former division, now dogged by the persistent attempts by his current division head, Holmes (Philip Ober) to force him back into boxing, and Burt Lancaster's Warden, who, whilst acting as the voice of reason for much of the film, is carrying on an illicit affair with Holmes' wife (Deborah Kerr, who allegedly carried on a romance with Lancaster off-set). Beginning with the introduction of this trio in 1941 on Hawaii- the events of Pearl Harbour arrive, quite suddenly in the last twenty minutes of the film- so we are introduced to this trio, with the arrival of Prewitt. 

Prewitt soon becomes the focus of Holmes' attentions, but refuses to join the inter-regimental boxing team, thus leading to a campaign by the superior officer against him, throughout which Prewitt stoically endures, even when threatened with a court martial. Throughout, there is a sensitivity to Clift's performance, as a man haunted by his blinding of a previous sparring partner, and whose care for his friend, especially once Maggio becomes the focus of a brutal campaign of hazings and beatings, after tangling with a fellow soldier, is palpable. Their friendship only becomes more complex, and increasingly strained, once Prewitt falls in love with the figure of nightclub girl, Lorene (Donna Reed, who also won an Oscar for her complex, multilayered performance), who quickly becomes his confidant. 

Contrasting this couple are Karen and Warden - they give the film its most iconic, much homaged, image, the embracing couple in the Hawaiian surf, its iconic shot held for a second, maybe more, before it breaks, and the couple retreat into the moonlit dunes - but elsewhere they are the film's social, and sexual, commentary in short. Karen is a social climber; her husband is the stunted pompous figure of Holmes, who Warden essentially chaperones through his role as platoon leader, and her marriage is loveless and distant, encouraging Warden, who ultimately proves not to be career minded as the sudden and shocking arrival of Pearl Harbour proves.

Against these two figures, of course, is Maggio. There is something to Sinatra's performance that goes beyond a merely well-chosen role, something about the hangdog "Why always me?" sensibility of this soldier that's victimised and later brutalised. Certainly, Sinatra's acting chops are impressive- Maggio is a stark performance a grounded noirish figure that he would later play in films like The Man with the Golden Arm, the film Sinatra believed was his better performance, and one that should have won him an Oscar. There is, also, undeniably, a catharsis; as Lancaster himself would note, the entire role feels like Sinatra working out the last half decade of his life's many failures and disappointments through the figure of Maggio - "his bitterness had something to do with the character of Maggio, but also with what he had gone through the last number of years."

The role itself has gained something of a later reputation, not least due to its appearance, via the thinly fictionalised Johnny Fontane asking for a favour from Don Corleone in The Godfather, and receiving, via racehorse head planted into the bed of movie mogul Woltz, who's turned down the singer appearing in his war movie. The singer gets his way, and promptly wins, yes, an Oscar. Previously, Sinatra, for his part, via his legal team, demanded to see the book's manuscript, and threatened to fight author Mario Puzo. Regardless of its storied history, it is the role that catapulted Sinatra back to being a star, a place where he would shine for the next twenty-five years, his final role coming in 1980's The First Deadly Sin. From Here to Eternity would remain his most lauded, and arguably his defining, role in American cinema. 

Sinatra would also prove that musicians could easily make a second career in acting, and only elevate their star potential. Over the next five weeks we we will consider a number of films in which musicians, like Sinatra turned actor, from the explosive arrival of the Beatles on the big screen, to Mick Jagger's chamleonic turn as an rockstar against James Fox's gangster, Scorsese, Kris Kristofferson, and Ellen Burstyn's romantic comedy, and David Bowie at his most alien. 

For now, though, From Here to Eternity remains not only a landmark in the career of Frank Sinatra, but one of the best American films of the 1950s, in which three men, embroiled in affairs, depict a nation on the verge of going to war.

Rating: Must See

From Here to Eternity is available via DVD and BluRay from Sony Pictures Home Entertainment and streaming from AppleTV

Next week, to the storied career of Elvis Presley, as we consider arguably the best of all the Elvis films, and where the singer met his match in Ann-Margret in Viva Las Vegas