The movie is set in 1941 at an Army base in Hawaii, right before the
bombing of Pearl Harbor. It follows several members of a unit. Pvt.
Robert E. Lee Prewitt (Montgomery Clift) is a recent transfer, a promising
boxer who refuses to join the unit's boxing team due to an unfortunate
accident in the ring. He is befriended by Pvt. Angelo Maggio (Frank
Sinatra), who has a rebellious streak and is therefore often assigned
to the same thankless duties as Prewitt, under continual punishment
in order to bully him into joining the boxing team.
Maggio introduces Prewitt to a gentleman's club, where he meets Lorene
(Donna Reed) and falls in love. She is saving up money to return to
the states and live a respectable life.
Meanwhile, the company sergeant, Milton Warden (Burt Lancaster), begins
a steamy affair with the captain's wife, played by Deborah Kerr. I'm
sure you've seen the famous love scene of them kissing in the surf.
In fact, a still from that scene is emblazoned on the scene.
Deborah Kerr was cast against type: previously, she'd played reserved
"good girls." In the same way, Donna Reed was cast against
type, playing a world-weary escort rather than her typically cheerful
girl-next-door role. In the novel, she was a member of a brothel, but
the change was made to suit censors, along with toning down profanity
and the brutality in a stockade scene.
In fact, if the studio had had its way, the cast would have been very
different. The head of Columbia Pictures, Harry Cohn, wanted Joan Crawford
for the captain's wife and Aldo Ray for the role of Prewitt. He felt
that Montgomery Clift didn't look enough like a soldier and wasn't physically
right to play a boxer. But the director refused to make the movie without
him. Frank Sinatra was considered box office poison, since his recent
movies had failed, but he turned out to bring the right mix of bravado
and likeability to the role of Maggio.
In fact, if Cohn had his way, the film would have also featured Edmond
O'Brien in the Burt Lancaster role, Julie Harris as Lorene and Eli Wallach
as Maggio.
Unlike some previous Best Picture winners set during World War II,
this film is much less gritty, concentrating primarily on interpersonal
relationships, rather than on the realities of war. Most of the interiors
are clearly shot in a studio, but plenty of exteriors show Hawaiian
landscapes. The lighting is so flat that the interiors look more like
a TV show than a film. Set design clearly didn't win this movie the
Oscar. Rather, the script and the acting did.
This film avoids many of the overblown monologues that prevailed in
previous winners set in World War II. This may be, in part, because
this film was not designed to drum up support for the war. Instead,
it is a story about several interconnected people, which happens to
be set on an Army base.
Even though the dialogue is more naturalistic, lesser actors would
not have done it justice. For example, when Donna Reed, as Lorene, talks
about her desire to have a respectable life, the steeliness and the
repressed pain in her eyes turn those lines into a confession of all
the unspoken hurt and shame Lorene carries.
The film uses a pared-down soundtrack, often refusing to go for the
big, dramatic swells that typically accompany dramatic moments. Through
this restraint, Zinnemann lends those scenes greater impact: the viewer
is forced to focus on the action, on the actors' expressions as they
cope.
By the time the inevitable attack on Pearl Harbor takes place, the
viewer has all but forgotten that it was coming, having gotten involved
in the story. That is what separates this movie from Michael Bay's explosion-heavy
2001 film, Pearl Harbor, which also follows a romance on a military
base just before the attack. While special effects are entertaining,
they are no substitute for a good script and skillful acting.
