To be quite blunt about it, I’ve said about all I have to say about From Here to Eternity. On the one hand, it seems remarkable that only the previous year Zinnemann had made the beautifully straightforward and unpretentious High Noon, but then again High Noon was out of keeping with Zinnemann’s usual output. Though he didn’t make it into Andrew Sarris’ landmark book The American Cinema: Directors and Directions (1968), Zinnemann has always seemed to me to perfectly fit into the Sarris category of “Strained Seriousness.” That’s to say he seems to try altogether too hard to make important movies that are rarely more than midcult — in other words, Oscar-bait that offers the illusion of being heavier than it is. That’s kind of how I feel about From Here to Eternity. And, yes, I am well aware that that’s a minority opinion.
The Hendersonville Film Society will show From Here to Eternity Sunday, Aug. 30, at 2 p.m. in the Smoky Mountain Theater at Lake Pointe Landing Retirement Community (behind Epic Cinemas), 333 Thompson St., Hendersonville.
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