A Place in the Sun

June 1, 2008

A Place in the Sun (1951) *****

Directed by George Stevens

A Place in the Sun is a chilling masterpiece that plays around with mood in a way I had never seen before. I didn’t know anything about this film as I began watching. The first hour comes across upbeat and sunny, while the second hour pivots into a pitch-black tone of judgment and condemnation. What’s refreshing about Stevens’ film, which is based on a play that’s based on a novel, is that good and evil are not always obvious to the characters themselves. One can reach his or her own opinion about whether or not George Eastman is a monster or a victim. The character himself struggles with his guilt or innocence all the way up to the second to last scene, so that his final journey in the last scene carries with it an acceptance of personal culpability (or lack thereof). I thought I finalized my judgment of George more than once while watching the film, and yet, I changed my mind completely at the end, which forced me to reevaluate the character instantly and intensely. Therefore, when the film was over, it really stuck with me!

Montgomery Clift, with all the charisma of James Dean a decade later, plays George Eastman, a poor young man from an odd background whose uncle owns a factory in which George becomes a laborer. His mother turned to a life of religious fervor leading street hymns and running a mission. Nine out of ten workers at the factory are women, and George is warned that it is strict company policy that employees do not socialize together. A young woman named Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters) catches George’s eye, and they secretly date, leading to a bad decision one night that leaves Alice pregnant with George’s baby. Before he learns about this, George submits a financial plan to his uncle, Earl Eastman (Keefe Brasselle), who invites George to a party at his house in order to offer him a promotion.

At the party, George catches the eye of Angela Vickers, the daughter of wealthy parents who are friends of Earl Eastman and his wife. Angela is played by Elizabeth Taylor, who is absolutely stunning in this picture. It’s kind of sad that my generation really only knows Elizabeth Taylor as the media hungry nutbar which she became later in her life. When she does pass away, I believe that a new respect will be given to Taylor by younger adults once they discover what a true talent she was. I’ve seen her in Giant, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and now A Place in the Sun, and I’ve come to recognize her as one of the great screen actresses in history.

Angela and George quickly fall madly in love, which presents a real conundrum for George when he learns of Alice’s pregnancy. In a very brave scene for a film from 1951, Alice visits a doctor to seek an abortion, but the doctor refuses. It seems the only option left for George is to honor his responsibility to marry Alice as soon as possible. They agree to marry on September 1^st, but this must change when Angela invites George to spend his holiday with her and her family. George lies to Alice about why he needs to postpone the wedding, and she discovers his lie when the papers print a picture of George and Angela together. Alice calls George at Angela’s parents’ house and demands that they get married immediately or else she will go to the newspapers and tell them everything.

George and Angela by this point have fallen totally in love with each other, and hearing about a semi-private lake where a young couple drowned the previous summer, George begins to think of a plan to eliminate Alice from his life so that he and Angela can be together. George rents a boat (under a false name) and takes Angela out to a part of the lake where the two of them are totally alone. George contemplates killing Alice, but then seems to change his mind. Alice stands up which causes the boat to tip. George is able to swim to safety, but Alice drowns. He walks through the woods to try and find the road and comes across some boy scouts that later identify him in court.

George returns to Angela trying to pretend the whole thing never happened. Unfortunately, the district attorney’s office decides to investigate the death of Alice and eventually arrest George for murder. A trial ensues which, if George is found guilty, would have him sent to the electric chair.

The very best scenes in the movie occur after the trial is over, where George believes that he is innocent, but then is forced to look at the reality that his one time desire to kill Alice did in fact lead to her death. I can’t recall any other courtroom drama where someone’s guilt is so unclear to everyone, even the accused himself. Angela abandons George so as not to appear in the paper. I really started hating Angela towards the end of the film, and then she visits George and that scene made me see her and George in a new light.

A Place in the Sun is a sad and grim look at a selfish individual who makes a huge mistake which he must pay for. The performances are wonderful, the direction is top notch, often intermingling fantasy and reality in a single frame, and the conclusion is truly haunting. A Place in the Sun gets to the core of the complexities of a murder case in which the accused isn’t a monster nor a victim—just a flawed human being, as we all are, who must pay for his fatal mistakes.