From Here to Eternity on Blu-ray

Category: Blu-ray's and DVD's

This 1953 Best Picture Oscar winner is now available – remastered in high-definition. From Here to Eternity garnered 8 Academy Awards and stars an impressive cast of top talent of the day.

 

Burt Lancaster, Montgomery Clift, Deborah Kerr, Frank Sinatra, Donna Reed, Jack Warden, Ernest Borgnine, and Philip Ober star, and viewers will also notice actors Claude Akins, George Reeves, and other familiar faces in this epic story of love and loss in 1941 Hawaii. Frank Sinatra won the Oscar for Best Actor in a Supporting Role and Donna Reed won for Best Actress in a Supporting Role. The lead actors, Montgomery Clift, Burt Lancaster, and Deborah Kerr, were nominated but did not take home the statue.

 

The story takes place during the six months leading up to the attack on Pearl Harbor. This is not a story of the war. It is a story of relationships. The characters just happen to be in the army. It begins when an Army private, Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Clift), arrives in Hawaii. Prewitt was a celebrated boxer but gave it up when he injured a man. Now all he wants to do is to be a good soldier.

 

Unfortunately, the Captain has other ideas. He desperately wants to win the boxing championship and knows he cannot do it without Prewitt on his team. So, along with the other soldiers on the boxing team, they set out to make Prewitt’s life miserable to get him to change his mind and join the team.

 

While his fellow soldiers are victimizing Prewitt, Sergeant Wardon (Lancaster) is carrying on an affair with the Captain’s wife (Deborah Kerr). And soldier Maggio (Sinatra) is having the time of his life getting drunk whenever possible, and enjoying himself. He has good luck with food, women, and booze, but when he ticks off the wrong guy, Sgt. Fatso Judson (Borgnine), his luck changes.

 

As his fellow soldiers are making his life difficult, Prewitt seeks out the affection of a young woman (Reed) who has come to the island to make enough money to return home a “proper” lady.

 

The combination of characters and relationships against the backdrop of looming war make this an absorbing film. And the scene, albeit brief, of Lancaster and Kerr kissing in the surf is legendary. This new Blu-ray is mastered in high-def, but it is still in black and white. However, one of the bonus features includes color home movies of the filming of some scenes. Perhaps one of these days they will colorize this film, and true classic film buffs will balk at that, but it might bring younger audiences in to watch this classic movie.

 

This new Blu-ray edition includes an exclusive “Graphics-in-Picture Track” which is an option to view the film with additional content. It’s here where viewers learn the amazing feat it took to bring this novel to the screen. At the time (in the 1950s) the novel From Here to Eternity was considered full of language and subjects that were almost taboo for the era. Watching this bonus, viewers get even more information about the times as the film rolls on. For anyone who has seen the movie, this track adds additional insight, and for those who have never seen it, it is a history and Hollywood lesson to go along with the award-winning film.

 

With award caliber performances under the direction of Fred Zinnemann and based on a story by James Jones, From Here to Eternity is one of those movies that is a must see.