From Here to Eternity

Classic WWII drama about the isolated US military men and women stationed in peacetime Hawaii, in the days before the attack on Pearl Harbour. From Here to Eternity swept the 1954 Oscars, winning the most Academy Awards for any picture since Gone With The Wind (1939). Starring Burt Lancaster as Sergeant Milt Warden and Deborah Kerr as Karen, the wife of his commanding officer. The two leads enter into an illicit affair that brings one of the most enduring scenes in cinema history - Lancaster and Kerr’s infamous kissing scene amongst the rolling surf on a Hawaiian beach.

Elsewhere, Private Robert E. Lee "Prew" Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) is a loner who communicates better with his bugle than he does with words, targeted for persecution by sadistic stockade sergeant Fatso Judson (Ernest Borgnine) for not boxing on his unit's team. Prew's lot is thrown in with Alma Lorene (Donna Reed), good-hearted "hostess" at the euphemistically named brothel The New Congress Club. All the joy and suffering of their everyday lives is swept away by the Japanese attack on the morning of December 7.

Prew's best friend is wisecracking Maggio, played by Frank Sinatra in an Oscar-winning performance that revived his flagging career (a role almost given to Eli Wallach, leading some to speculate that Sinatra's alleged Mafia ties pressured producers to give Sinatra the role, which in turn may have inspired the Johnny Fontane and the horse's head storyline in The Godfather).

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