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.
Ho sted 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.
