Back from Eternity (1956)

(On Cable TV, July 2021) I’m at a point in my exploration of Classic Hollywood where Sturgeon’s Law is finally reasserting itself. As a reminder, Science Fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon once said that “ninety percent of everything is crud.” This is relevant to classic Hollywood in that most people who dive into the era will first see the classics — and over the forty-year period from 1927 (sound cinema) to 1967 (New Hollywood), there are a lot of them. But sooner or later, you run out of the best and have to tackle the rest, and that takes us to Back from Eternity, a rather disjointed survival drama that takes forever to get going, eventually making its way to lifeboat ethics that it tackles with disturbing gusto. The premise of the film has an airplane crash-land in South America, with nine survivors doing their best to repair the plan and survive the local headhunters. My TV guide log entry helpfully adds, “…but the repaired plane can only hold five people,” which pretty much gives away everything but the last three minutes of the film. As with other stories manipulating a plot to end up in an ethical quandary about lifeboat survival (seriously: Why five rather than eight when you’re dealing with an airliner? The pilot’s fiat declaration carries a lot of weight here), the screenwriter goes straight to logic and reason as arbiter of who should live or die, which usually leads us straight to arbitrary decision based on the screenwriter’s morality. Blech. This being said, there are many, many other problems with Back from Eternity even before it finally gets to its final reel — the interminable setup that ends up with very little payoff being the worst of them. Much of the film’s publicity material makes a bit deal out of Anita Ekberg as the film’s pin-up girl, but the most interesting role here goes to a bearded Rod Steiger as a moral criminal with nothing to lose in making decisions for others. The black-and-white cinematography is a disappointment given the lush jungle setting, although it probably simplified the process of shooting most of the film on a soundstage. All in all — Back from Eternity is far from being the worst film ever made, but it’s still a disappointment considering the long setup and the disappointing payoff. But then again, most movies are crud.