Tea at Trianon: From Here to Eternity (1953)

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Friday, August 1, 2025

From Here to Eternity (1953)

Cinema Romantico: Friday's Old Fashioned: From Here To Eternity

Deborah Kerr in "From Here to Eternity" (1953) I can still hear British-born Kerr using an American accent and calling Burt Lancaster "Sergeant" with a hard R.

From Anthony Esolen:

Our Film of the Week, From Here to Eternity, is not, as some people say with a hint of scorn, a “soap opera” that takes place at Pearl Harbor right before and then during the Japanese surprise attack. Let me first describe the cast of characters. The company captain, Dana Holmes (played to “perfection” by Philip Ober, if you can call by that name a mingled brew of cowardice, hard-heartedness, irresponsibility, and immorality) is married to a woman, Karen (Deborah Kerr; playing against type) who is a hundred times the human being that he is. She has also taken to drink, and she is, unfortunately, on the prowl. Holmes’ subordinate who has to do his dirty work for him and who loathes every bit of it, Sergeant Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster), picks up Karen one night while she is tottering alone on the street, and they fall into, or rather pitch themselves into, a passionate romance. Karen pleads with Warden to apply for promotion to the rank of an officer; then she will divorce her husband and marry him. She does not want to be married to a man directly in harm’s way.
Private Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) shows up, a former boxer who has given up the sport after blinding his sparring partner, but he will not say why he refuses to enter Holmes’ boxing competition. Holmes is nothing if not vindictive — but of course he forces the sergeant to apply the punishment. The one fellow soldier who takes Prewitt’s part is a skinny Italian guy, Angelo Maggio (Frank Sinatra, in what I think is his finest part), but Maggio earns the hatred of a sadistic sergeant, Fatso Judson (Ernest Borgnine; we love him in Marty, but he sure could play the heavy, too, as he also does in Bad Day at Black Rock). Prewitt, meanwhile, falls in love with a girl, Alma (Donna Reed), and their relationship too is not on the clear side of what is good and right. Alma has tricked herself up as “Lorene,” working the beat so as to make enough money to go back to Oregon and marry a “proper” man, by which she means a man rich enough to be respected. (Read more.)