Did anyone else find the dialog stilted? The characters' speech didn't sound natural to me. Or could it be that it's a period thing?
It strikes me that the end could be considered social commentary, i.e., both women were and are "whores", in the sense that they're prisoners for eternity of men (or Alma plans to be); they have no agency, no choices, and they know it. Thoughts?
"When you think of garbage, think of Akeem!"
Yes, the final scene was anticlimatic and a poor ending. Did Alma make up that story or did Burt Lancaster tell it to her?
shareAnd I couldn't understand the last line that each of them spoke! I saw it on t.v. and then found it on youtube (and also the 1979 remake) and I still didn't get it. On about the 3rd time I listened to it, I got that in the original movie Alma said "Silly old name" and Karen didn't say anything. (In the 1979 remake, Alma said "Silly old mint julep name" and Karen said "It's a nice name.)
(And I think Alma made up the story, preparing for her "new" and more proper life on the mainland.)
I didn't care for it either. Not the dialogue anyway. Donna Reed's lies about Pruitt pissed me off. He deserved better.
shareI like the ending better than most people I know. These two women were, like so many who were in Honolulu during the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, in shock. Their chitchat was part truth, part lies. They were just keeping one another company. The final shot in the film was beautiful. It speaks for itself.
shareShe made it up. Prewitt wasn't a bomber pilot like she claimed, and she knew that. Technically he wasn't even her fiancé either. Also, notice how just before the final shot, after she has mentioned being gifted the Silver Star he was apparently awarded, the camera moves to a shot where you can see her holding Prewitt's silver bugle mouthpiece. The story she told Karen was likely just what she thought the ideal circumstances of Prewitt's death should have been (being killed by the enemy while attempting something heroic, as opposed to being shot by friendly fire while sneaking back to camp after being AWOL for several days) up to and including him coming from the respectable society she had always wanted to be a part of (saying he was from a "fine Southern family"). What's especially beautifully ironic is that Karen knows that Alma's lying the moment she mentions Prewitt's name since Warden had told her about him, but she allows Alma to keep to her story despite having spent the film prior to that moment immediately calling out everyone's lies and half-truths. In this one case, she allows Alma the comfort of her lies.
I might be alone in thinking this but it always felt to me as though the final scene was meant to be anti-climactic. The climax of the film had already occurred a few scenes earlier with the attack and the emotional climax occurred with Prewitt's death. The final scene is basically just a tag showing that even after tragedy, life always just goes on - Prewitt, Maggio and Fatso are dead along with all the others who died in the attack, two women have lost the loves of their lives, the US is now officially at war, everything that happened between these people doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things...but both Alma and Karen still have their lives to lead and they will go on leading them. After what's actually quite a bleak film, it somehow manages to end on a bittersweet note rather than just being a full-on downer ending.
Bittersweet, definitely, and IMHO it contradicts the person above who says it shows the women with no agency. Alma has always intended to make a new life for herself and this is the official start - she's reinventing herself and her background, eventually she'll believe she really is the respectable war widow she will claim to be. She'll make a new life somewhere far from Honolulu, marry "again", maybe keep a shop and/or have children, forget everything about her old life but Prewitt.
Karen has rather less agency, but with the far on her worthless husband will be away for years, and there are good odds he won't come back.