Back From Eternity (1956) – full review!
Back From Eternity (1956) – full review!
Produced and directed by John Farrow (Wake Island (1942)) in the same year that he’d win his only Academy Award sharing the Best Adapted Screenplay Writing Oscar for Around the World in Eighty Days (1956) this remake of director Farrow’s earlier RKO film Five Came Back (1939) features the same Richard Carroll story but this one’s screenplay was written by Jonathan Latimer instead. It’s a slightly above average adventure drama that doesn’t quite have the impact (or originality) of the earlier film but does feature more richly defined characters including more about their backgrounds than the original did (this one is 25 minutes longer). The story is about a South American bound airliner with passengers from differing backgrounds that is forced by a storm to land in a jungle containing headhunters. The survivors must repair the plane in time to escape a terrible fate but then learn that it will only carry five "back from eternity" such that a decision has to made. The cast is both recognizable and (in some cases) excellent:
Robert Ryan plays the experienced even legendary pilot Bill Lonagan who drinks a bit as he nears retirement; Anita Ekberg plays the fallen woman an unwanted foreign-born close to being deported Las Vegas casino "good time" girl named Rena; Rod Steiger plays Vasquel who’s on his way to death row in South America for a political assassination attempt on a General; Phyllis Kirk plays Louise Melhorn who’s eloping with Jud Ellis (played by Gene Barry) but later has eyes for the young co-pilot Joe Brooks (played by Keith Andes) – departing from the original Barry’s character is not as well defined as Patric Knowles’s wealthy businessman and in fact appears only to be a playboy of sorts (in fact his subsequent "downfall" is barely shown making Louise’s loss of interest in him appear more about her sudden attraction to Joe than her disdain for a lack of demonstrable character on Jud’s part); Fred Clark plays the bounty hunter Crimp who’s only strength is derived from the weapon he carries that’s taking Vasquel to justice; Beulah Bondi (one of her later films) and Cameron Prud’Homme play the older couple Martha and Professor Henry Spangler who come to know Vasquel best in the jungle – the two men sharing common interests; Jesse White plays gunman Pete Boswick who’s escorting his mob boss’s (Tol Avery uncredited) six year old son Tommy Malone (Jon Provost); and Adele Mara plays the ill-fated stewardess Maria Alvarez. James Burke (uncredited) plays the airline manager Grimsby.
Rather than beginning at the airport as the original does this one starts in Las Vegas where the background of Anita Ekberg’s Rena is much better defined than Lucille Ball’s fallen woman Peggy Nolan. Plus rather than being a one-stop sleeper flight that includes all of the principal cast from the beginning the characters in this remake are staged to converge onto the same "doomed" plane from a couple of different airports within in the U.S. and then south of the border. Other minor differences (besides just the character’s names) in this film when compared to the original include: co-pilot Brooks (the surname of the pilot in the first one) doesn’t show a pre-flight interest in Ellis’s fiancée; Pete is a more reluctant "nursemaid" for Tommy almost allowing the boy to fly alone before finding out (by reading the paper vs. hearing it on the radio in flight) that his boss had been killed – plus Pete is searched and his gun is removed from him before he boards the plane; after the "crash" the possibility of hiking out is never discussed; less time screen-time given to how the survivors obtained and prepared their food and "living quarters" (therefore who does and doesn’t do this work is less character revealing); Steiger’s "anarchist" is given more time on-screen (naturally); there’s a cat-fight between Louise and Rena over Joe in the stream; and this one has a last touching moment between the Spanglers (discussing their quasi-parental feelings) just before the end.