FROM HERE TO ETERNITY (1953)

What a movie!  Set in 1941 on a military base in Hawaii, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY tells the story of a hardheaded soldier named Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) who always seems to do things the hard way.  As the film opens, he's losing his Corporal rank as a bugler to transfer to a rifle company as a buck private.  Once there's he's pretty much told by the Captain that he'll be promoted to Sergeant within a year if he joins the regimental boxing team.  Prew refuses and is then given "the treatment".  Meanwhile, the First Sergeant (Burt Lancaster) is getting sick and tired of being the Captain's work bitch and starts making googly eyes at the Captain's broken wife.

Having just finished the novel I was curious to see how they even made it into a mainstream movie back in 1953 since the novel itself is grim and sexually explicit, but they did a great job.  Yeah, a lot of stuff was cut out or changed completely, but the dismal feel is still there.  And the acting!  It's easy to see why this film received five Oscar nominations for Acting and won two...if Ernest Borgnine's role had been bigger he probably would have been nominated also! I don't even know who's performance was my favorite.  Montgomery Clift was great, especially at portraying the internal (almost suicidal?) struggles of Prewitt, Burt Lancaster was just straight up awesome, Donna Reed (who I mostly know from her show and IT'S A WONDERFUL LIFE) was surprisingly adult.  Seeing her here as a jaded hostess at private gentlemen's club was quite an eye-opener!

Beautiful B&W photography, Claude Akins screen debut, Frank Sinatra showing his acting chops, Deborah Kerr being sexy, excellent story, great pace, beautiful Hawaiian scenery.  If the story wasn't so censored, FROM HERE TO ETERNITY would be close to going on my Best Movies list, but as it is I think the majority of modern audiences would find the whole thing too dated.  Highly recommended though for classic movie fans.

DONOVAN'S REEF (1963)

I love John Wayne, but I don't love him enough to be a fan of this movie.  Told with the utmost sentimentality, the story is about three WWII soldiers who after the war stayed on the French Polynesian where they had been fighting.  The first guy (Jack Warden) is a saint among men.  He's a doctor and has a church and a hospital complete with nuns on his property.  He also has three young children, their mother (a island princess) died during childbirth.  The other two fellows are the hard-living John Wayne and Lee Marvin who spend most of their time fighting each other.  And when I say fighting, I mean fighting, these dudes aren't just wrestling around grab-assing, they're bashing each other in the head with bottles, chairs, boards, whatever they can get their hands on.  Kicking each other in the face, I don't see how either one of them is even alive!

Anyway, the drama comes when word gets around that the saintly doctor is lined up, due to a death in the family, to be the majority stockholder in the family's shipping company.  The catch is he has to be of high moral standing and since he has three children of mixed heritage then, of course, he's a sinner that's gonna burn in Hell for all eternity.  To get around this, John Wayne steps in to act as the children's father while the auditor is visiting.  Trouble is the woman who's sent to determine Doc's moral standing is also his estranged daughter from before the War!  She also, naturally, falls for Wayne, but is emotional conflicted by her love versus the fact he has three children out of wedlock!

I dislike movies about children and if I had known this movie prominently featured kids I wouldn't have watched it.  But I did and I didn't like it at all.  Wayne himself was fine, but the script was way too feel-goodie for my taste, Lee Marvin was completely wasted, the Christmas church service was painful to watch, the priest was annoying, the nuns were annoying, the main actress was annoying, the kids were horrible...but man the scenery was beautiful!!  Wow.

Most people will probably like the film, but based off the poster and setting I was expecting a rough and tumble action-comedy that was actually funny, like NORTH TO ALASKA but on a tropical island instead.