Based on the appropriately named novel An American Tragedy, A Place in the Sun is a noirish and properly tragic melodrama hailed as a nigh-on perfect movie when it came out in 1951. Since then its stock has fallen somewhat, though the first two thirds still work beautifully, thanks in no small part to the performance of Shelley Winters, though Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor’s scenes together also exert a mesmeric pull.
Its tragic hero is George (Clift), the poor relation of the wealthy manufacturing family the Eastmans, who, having tapped his uncle for a job, catches the eye of Alice (Winters), a demure sweetie who works alongside him on his uncle’s production line. Thanks to the Eastman family’s social status, George has also drifted into the orbit of Angela Vickers (Taylor), daughter of the town’s other prominent family. Certain he couldn’t get within a country mile of Angela, George woos Alice, partly because she’s there right in front of him and partly because with a bit of persuasion she’s willing to come across.
In a one two three Alice gets pregnant, discovers the local doctor won’t “help” her (in scenes audiences at the time would have understood were about abortion) and then starts putting pressure on George to make a decent woman of her. But George has recently been promoted – Alice was right and the Eastman name meant George wouldn’t be slumming it on the factory floor for long – and has also met-cute with Angela, who is hotter for him than he could possibly have imagined.
As George drifts upwards towards the social station he increasingly regards as his birthright, and towards Angela, it becomes obvious that pregnant Alice is now in his way, blocking his access to his place in the sun. George decides she needs to go.
That’s the film’s perfect first two thirds, in which George’s tragic flaw (he craves upward mobility) leads him by the nose to his fate. The last third deals with the “boating accident” George arranges for Alice and its consequences – the trial for murder and George’s doomed attempt to save himself. First two thirds – tragedy. Last third – melodrama.
Shelley Winters claimed it took her years to recover from playing the role of the abject Alice, the poor girl who can’t believe her luck when handsome George (a member of the Eastman family, no less) starts making eyes at her and is then driven out of her mind trying to hang on to him as he disappears out of view. Though Winters was a bit of a drama queen, you can believe her claims watching her performance as the increasingly frantic Alice. Her key scene is Alice alone at the doctor’s trying to procure an abortion while George skulks around in the dark outside. Director George Stevens keeps the camera static and on Winters for the most important moments, which pack an emotional punch, especially as we know Alice’s situation is worse than she imagines.
The excellent cinematography is by William C Mellor (Bad Day at Black Rock), though John F Seitz (Double Indemnity, Sunset Blvd) gets an “uncredited” mention on the IMDb. Is this for the scenes between Taylor and Clift, which have a magical, glowing quality unlike the rest of the film? If it is Seitz with the close-ups, soft lights and magic sprinkles, the effect is to absolve George and Angela of blame as well. Like Alice, they are being tossed about by a cruel fate – Angela and George didn’t want to fall in love but they have.
Stevens populates his film with stand-ins for Fate itself – lone figures on the side of the frame, looming up out of the woods, appearing at the post office and so on. If it weren’t so metaphysical, the film might almost have been a forerunner of the British kitchen sinkers like Room at the Top, in which working-class British lads come a cropper trying to move up the social scale.
Taylor is 19 years old here and though she’s playing a cipher – she’s the anti-Alice – she goes at her role with everything she’s got. It’s said she only really understood what acting could be after getting to know Clift, the method actor’s method actor, and you can believe it on this evidence. But there’s other good stuff to look out for. Notably Raymond Burr as the dogged district attorney. This is the film that got him the Perry Mason gig, though A Place in the Sun would have been better with less of him, much less of the last third of the movie, in fact. It’s the way this film lays out its prospectus that so compelling to watch, because it’s so pitiless. The way it plays out can’t compete.
A Place in the Sun – Watch it/buy it at Amazon
I am an Amazon affiliate
© Steve Morrissey 2024