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The Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor takes place only near the end of "From Here to Eternity" (1953). But it's an ideal selection for the Maryland Historical Society's series, "Patriotic Hollywood: World War II in Film." Stephen Ambrose once wrote, "What held [American GIs] together was not country and flag, but unit cohesion." "From Here to Eternity" is about the pain of building that unit cohesion and the rewards it gives to all who join it, be they selfless, selfish or damaged.
The movie's anti-hero, Robert E. Lee Prewitt, loves the Army and wants to be "a 30-year man." The Army taught him how to play the bugle, and Prewitt (played by Montgomery Clift) acknowledges, "I bugle well." As he says in some of the most profound words uttered in any American movie, "A man loves a thing, that don't mean it's got to love him back. ... You love a thing, you got to be grateful."
Prewitt transfers from a buglers' outfit to an infantry company stationed in Schofield Barracks near Pearl Harbor because a lesser man with a horn has been unfairly named First Bugler. Unfortunately for Prewitt, his new captain prizes boxing over bugling, and though Prewitt was a budding middleweight star, he gave up boxing after blinding his mentor in a sparring match.
Much of the movie is about how Capt. "Dynamite" Holmes, a corrupt careerist, tacitly encourages his boxers - whom he has promoted, one and all, into noncommissioned officers - to give Prewitt "the Treatment" until he agrees to become part of the team. The Treatment includes nonstop menial duties and cruel and arbitrary punishments, such as digging a 6-foot-deep grave and then "burying" a paper at the bottom. The Treatment also involves being distanced from the rest of the troops, except for those fellow misfits who come to Prewitt's defense, like Frank Sinatra's irrepressible, liberty-loving Maggio.
Sergeant Warden ( Burt Lancaster), who in effect runs Dynamite Holmes' unit, tries to protect Prewitt from his own hardheadedness. Prewitt feels, "If a man don't go his own way, he's nothin'." Warden wants to help Prewitt go his own way and the Army way. Prewitt's downfall is a tragedy for both men. But the brief spurt of action we see in "From Here to Eternity," as Warden springs into command with electric authority, shows the military payoff of the sergeant's overall efforts.
Today, a director would draw out the scene when Prewitt avenges Maggio with a knife and telegraph the one when he mourns him with a bugle. Fred Zinnemann does just the opposite. We grasp the notes first as they come in from the parade grounds through the barracks windows, then as Prewitt repeats the somber tune with the amplifying megaphone pointed in an alternate direction. Men stand on the barracks steps and listen for a second time. It's one of the most stirring and heroic sequences in any military movie, and there isn't a shot to be heard.
Hosted by Mike Giuliano, "From Here to Eternity" plays Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Maryland Historical Society, 201 W. Monument St.; phone 410-685-3750, ext. 354, or go to mdhs.org.
'LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN'
Gene Tierney as the most fatale femme in movie history provides the red-hot center to John Stahl's magnificently obsessive "Leave Her to Heaven" (1945), a delirious Technicolor film noir and a hot pick for the Charles' revival series in a superb 35 mm restoration. From the moment Tierney and Cornel Wilde (playing a best-selling writer) meet as strangers on a train, the film exerts a hypnotic pull as murderous romance, courtroom spectacular (with Vincent Price as the DA) and dysfunctional-family tragicomedy: "There's nothing wrong with [her], it's just that she loves too much!" says Mom.
"Leave Her to Heaven" plays Saturday at noon, Monday at 7 p.m., and Thursday at 9 p.m at the Charles,1711 N. Charles St. Call 410-727-3456 or go to thecharles.com.
BOISTER DOES BUSTER
Ultra-eclectic keyboard artist and composer Anne Watts and the group Boister will once again play their original score to Buster Keaton's mind-expanding silent comedy "Steamboat Bill, Jr." (1928) Saturday at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. at the Chesapeake Arts Center. Few pictures are more energizing than this often-overlooked masterpiece. It starts as a bizarre yet modest farce about the vain attempts of a collegiate son (Keaton) to bond with his river-tramp dad (Ernest Torrence) and builds into a surreal epic that induces euphoria. Watts and Boister wisely don't compete with Keaton for your attention. Their score, which quotes everything from "Stormy Weather" to "We Are the Champions," rises and falls with the ebb and flow of the reluctant hero's adventures.
"Steamboat Bill, Jr." inspired Walt Disney's first Mickey Mouse cartoon with sound, "Steamboat Willie"; "Mickey Mouse music" swiftly became the term for scores that mechanically echoed every bit of action on the screen. Luckily, there's nothing Mickey Mouse about Watts and Boister's music. Their segues from ambling pastoral themes to percolating urban riffs underline the Oedipal conflicts of a Boston-bred son and a barnacled Big River-riding dad.
Boister accompanies "Steamboat Bill, Jr." on Saturday, 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., at Chesapeake Arts Center, 194 Hammonds Lane; call 410-636-6597 or go to chesapeakearts.org.
EXPERIMENTS AT MICA
Baltimore natives Julia Oldham and Stephanie Barber are among the 27 artists participating in Washington Project for the Arts' Experimental Media Series, "a multi-evening screening of innovative international video and sound art" showcased for two nights this week at Maryland Institute College of Art. Kelly Gordon, associate curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, who selected the work, has promised a "robustly diverse" slate, "linked only by my definition of quality."
WPA's Experimental Media Series unspools at Falvey Hall, Brown Center, MICA, 1301 W. Mount Royal Ave., on Tuesday and Wednesday night, 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Free. Go to www.mica.edu for more information.
The movie's anti-hero, Robert E. Lee Prewitt, loves the Army and wants to be "a 30-year man." The Army taught him how to play the bugle, and Prewitt (played by Montgomery Clift) acknowledges, "I bugle well." As he says in some of the most profound words uttered in any American movie, "A man loves a thing, that don't mean it's got to love him back. ... You love a thing, you got to be grateful."
Prewitt transfers from a buglers' outfit to an infantry company stationed in Schofield Barracks near Pearl Harbor because a lesser man with a horn has been unfairly named First Bugler. Unfortunately for Prewitt, his new captain prizes boxing over bugling, and though Prewitt was a budding middleweight star, he gave up boxing after blinding his mentor in a sparring match.
Much of the movie is about how Capt. "Dynamite" Holmes, a corrupt careerist, tacitly encourages his boxers - whom he has promoted, one and all, into noncommissioned officers - to give Prewitt "the Treatment" until he agrees to become part of the team. The Treatment includes nonstop menial duties and cruel and arbitrary punishments, such as digging a 6-foot-deep grave and then "burying" a paper at the bottom. The Treatment also involves being distanced from the rest of the troops, except for those fellow misfits who come to Prewitt's defense, like Frank Sinatra's irrepressible, liberty-loving Maggio.
Sergeant Warden ( Burt Lancaster), who in effect runs Dynamite Holmes' unit, tries to protect Prewitt from his own hardheadedness. Prewitt feels, "If a man don't go his own way, he's nothin'." Warden wants to help Prewitt go his own way and the Army way. Prewitt's downfall is a tragedy for both men. But the brief spurt of action we see in "From Here to Eternity," as Warden springs into command with electric authority, shows the military payoff of the sergeant's overall efforts.
Today, a director would draw out the scene when Prewitt avenges Maggio with a knife and telegraph the one when he mourns him with a bugle. Fred Zinnemann does just the opposite. We grasp the notes first as they come in from the parade grounds through the barracks windows, then as Prewitt repeats the somber tune with the amplifying megaphone pointed in an alternate direction. Men stand on the barracks steps and listen for a second time. It's one of the most stirring and heroic sequences in any military movie, and there isn't a shot to be heard.
Hosted by Mike Giuliano, "From Here to Eternity" plays Saturday at 2 p.m. at the Maryland Historical Society, 201 W. Monument St.; phone 410-685-3750, ext. 354, or go to mdhs.org.
'LEAVE HER TO HEAVEN'
Gene Tierney as the most fatale femme in movie history provides the red-hot center to John Stahl's magnificently obsessive "Leave Her to Heaven" (1945), a delirious Technicolor film noir and a hot pick for the Charles' revival series in a superb 35 mm restoration. From the moment Tierney and Cornel Wilde (playing a best-selling writer) meet as strangers on a train, the film exerts a hypnotic pull as murderous romance, courtroom spectacular (with Vincent Price as the DA) and dysfunctional-family tragicomedy: "There's nothing wrong with [her], it's just that she loves too much!" says Mom.
"Leave Her to Heaven" plays Saturday at noon, Monday at 7 p.m., and Thursday at 9 p.m at the Charles,1711 N. Charles St. Call 410-727-3456 or go to thecharles.com.
BOISTER DOES BUSTER
Ultra-eclectic keyboard artist and composer Anne Watts and the group Boister will once again play their original score to Buster Keaton's mind-expanding silent comedy "Steamboat Bill, Jr." (1928) Saturday at 8 p.m. and 10 p.m. at the Chesapeake Arts Center. Few pictures are more energizing than this often-overlooked masterpiece. It starts as a bizarre yet modest farce about the vain attempts of a collegiate son (Keaton) to bond with his river-tramp dad (Ernest Torrence) and builds into a surreal epic that induces euphoria. Watts and Boister wisely don't compete with Keaton for your attention. Their score, which quotes everything from "Stormy Weather" to "We Are the Champions," rises and falls with the ebb and flow of the reluctant hero's adventures.
"Steamboat Bill, Jr." inspired Walt Disney's first Mickey Mouse cartoon with sound, "Steamboat Willie"; "Mickey Mouse music" swiftly became the term for scores that mechanically echoed every bit of action on the screen. Luckily, there's nothing Mickey Mouse about Watts and Boister's music. Their segues from ambling pastoral themes to percolating urban riffs underline the Oedipal conflicts of a Boston-bred son and a barnacled Big River-riding dad.
Boister accompanies "Steamboat Bill, Jr." on Saturday, 8 p.m. and 10 p.m., at Chesapeake Arts Center, 194 Hammonds Lane; call 410-636-6597 or go to chesapeakearts.org.
EXPERIMENTS AT MICA
Baltimore natives Julia Oldham and Stephanie Barber are among the 27 artists participating in Washington Project for the Arts' Experimental Media Series, "a multi-evening screening of innovative international video and sound art" showcased for two nights this week at Maryland Institute College of Art. Kelly Gordon, associate curator at the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden, who selected the work, has promised a "robustly diverse" slate, "linked only by my definition of quality."
WPA's Experimental Media Series unspools at Falvey Hall, Brown Center, MICA, 1301 W. Mount Royal Ave., on Tuesday and Wednesday night, 7 p.m.-9 p.m. Free. Go to www.mica.edu for more information.
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