From Here to Eternity

If you've never seen From Here to Eternity (1953), you've probably at least seen that image of Burt Lancaster and Deborah Kerr pawing at each other on the beach (either the real thing or a parody of it). Their torrid love affair isn't really the most interesting thing about the film, however, and at times the movie seems to forget about that romance altogether. From Here to Eternity is essentially an army soap opera, set in Hawaii in 1941. I'm sure you can guess what major historical event the movie is leading up to. Until the big showdown at Pearl Harbor, Eternity--which was adapted from the James Jones novel by Daniel Taradash and directed by Fred Zinneman--is about two soldiers and their struggle against the machinery of the army and civilization: Lancaster plays a sergeant who's trying to move up in the military world by doing what's expected of him (and pulling the strings by proxy when he can). The trouble for him begins when he starts sleeping with the corruptible captain's wife. She's played with pouty sumptuousness by Deborah Kerr. Montgomery Clift is the other soldier, the loner-cum-rebel Robert E. Lee Prewitt, whose claims to fame in the army are his top notch bugle and boxing skills. (He shows off his bugle talents in an amusing scene in a night club, and then later when he plays "Taps" to try and tug at our patriotic heart-strings.)

Fortunately, there's no actual boxing in this movie, or I might have turned it off. But there are a few fight scenes, all of them involving Montgomery Clift, who seems too small to actually defeat any of the gorillas he's up against. Despite all the scuffles, Prewitt refuses to participate in any organized fighting, much to the chagrin of his superior, who proceeds to make his life a living hell. Prewitt befriends an amiable private played by Frank Sinatra and falls in love with a girl (Donna Reed) he meets at a gentleman's club. Even though Montgomery Clift's performance is striking, it's never completely clear why someone so fiercely independent as his character would want to join the army in the first place. One can accept Lancaster's rule-following sergeant much more easily.

Eternity juggles more stories than it seems able to, but the finale is exciting and the film still holds up: the actors are all generally interesting, and the presumably steamy aspects of the Jones novel seem to at least have gotten through here via dialogue (and that famous beach make-out scene), even if it's pretty tame by today's standards. The supporting cast includes Philip Ober (as the disreputable captain), Ernest Borgnine, and Jack Warden.

The Wild Bunch

The Wild Bunch (1969) may be responsible for giving the Western film some new breath. Its director, Sam Peckinpah, was known for his use of brutality, and in The Wild Bunch he gives the violent seems some kind of poetic elegance. (They have a kick to them that you don't exactly enjoy, but it's exciting nonetheless.) There are a number of striking sequences which make The Wild Bunch a memorable Western even 43 years later. The three that stand out the most are one at the beginning, where the band of outlaws robs a bank; one in the middle, where they blow up a bridge; and the final showdown between the main characters and an army of Mexicans, where the machine gun they've just handed over to the Mexicans is then used in a show of mutual annihilation.

The problem with The Wild Bunch is its length. At two hours and twenty-three minutes, it goes on and on and on, and the exciting moments aren't enough to make up for the long, poky stretches. It reminded me of that incredibly drawn-out wedding sequence in The Deer Hunter. There's a point where a director's attempt to contrast violence with more jovial, laid-back sequences becomes overstated, and Peckinpah is guilty of this in The Wild Bunch just as Michael Cimino was in The Deer Hunter.

The cast is noteworthy: William Holden, Ernest Borgnine, Robert Ryan, Edmond O'Brien, Warren Oates, Jaime Sanchez, Ben Johnson, and Strother Martin. The performances are as brutally real as the surroundings. This is certainly the anti-Butch Cassidy (a light-hearted version of the same idea, also released in 1969. You can't fault Peckinpah for wanting to make Westerns tough and unashamedly gritty again). And there are some funny throwaway lines. Martin calls someone a "two-bit, redneck peckerwood." (He was also the one who uttered the most famous line in Cool Hand Luke. He has a way with dialogue that is all his own.)

William Holden really carries this movie. Between Holden's performance and Peckinpah's vision, the two of them endow The Wild Bunch with a sense of the beauty of hopelessness. The tragic ending that's destined for these criminals is right because it's inevitable, and it's not delivered with any kind of moralistic hubris. Rather, Peckinpah is pointing out the futility of things. Perhaps that's the appeal of this kind of movie, and the ultimate appeal of the Western genre. And Peckinpah's influence is still felt in movies. His shoot-out sequences have been plagiarized over and over again. Despite all this, I found myself looking forward to the final credits. It's the kind of movie I can appreciate more than I can truly enjoy.

Escape From New York

John Carpenter's trash-art action yarn Escape From New York (1981) has two things going for it: Kurt Russell's bad-ass performance as Snake Plissken, and a gritty, pulpy atmosphere that transcends its paper-thin storyline. The film is set in the near future, where Manhattan Island has been transformed into the country's lone maximum security prison. (Presumably there was low interest in preserving the Big Apple's iconic cultural monuments and history.) When the President's plane goes down inside the premises, the government makes a deal with a war criminal, Snake Plissken, to rescue the President in exchange for his freedom.

This was Carpenter's fifth feature film, coming off the phenomenal success of Halloween (1978) and the moderate success of The Fog (1980), but more closely related to his cult thriller Assault on Precinct 13 (1976). Both Escape and Assault have a certain neo-Western apathy for cinematic niceties, an attitude Carpenter seems to apply to all his movies. He's in love with those 1950s Westerns by Howard Hawks and he seems to have embedded into his movies a sort of synthetic sense of Los Angeles cool, even when the setting isn't L.A.

The problem with Escape From New York is that it never builds enough momentum to sustain its intriguing but problematic story. The idea feels like something contrived by a 12-year-old kid. It has wonderful cinematic possibilities, but Carpenter seems to have written this in a hurry, or perhaps when he decided to make this movie (he had written the screenplay years earlier) he didn't revise it. There are kinks in the plot, most embarrassingly the incredulous prospect of getting all the law-abiding Manhattanites to give up their jobs and their homes and their lives and leave the city to the underworld of criminals that inherit it in this movie.

The film itself looks like a comic book, and it's this dark, guttery, gloomy, nightmare-metropolis  production design that really makes Escape From New York a fun diversion, despite its shortcomings. You can tell the film's money pool wasn't too deep, and in a way, the shoestring budget works for it. It's a throwback to the  B movies that probably made Carpenter want to make movies when he was a kid.

The film was shot by Dean Cundey, who did the cinematography for several Carpenter films, and produced by long-time Carpenter collaborator Debra Hill. It moves along without much sense, but you find ways to enjoy yourself anyway.

The cast of stock characters, poorly fleshed out (such a shame, considering the collection of talent assembled), includes Adrienne Barbeau (whose wonderful comic abilities are barely used), Lee Van Cleef, Donald Pleasence, Harry Dean Stanton, Isaac Hayes, Ernest Borgnine, Tom Atkins, and Charles Cyphers. ★★★