A Place In The Sun

A Place In The Sun
1951 - Paramount Pictures
Directed By George Stevens



SYNOPSIS

George Eastman (Montgomery Clift) accepts a job in his rich uncle's business. He begins a romance with co-worker Alice (Shelley Winters) even though fraternizing among employees is forbidden. George meets a young, wealthy socialite (Elizabeth Taylor) and falls deeply in love. But when Alice becomes pregnant, George tries to find a way out of the relationship. He can't shake the horrifying thought of drowning Alice in a lake.



MY THOUGHTS

Doomed love makes for an ominous, tragic story and a amazing film.

Director George Stevens starts off the story a bit slow but builds an foreboding tone that builds and comes to a head with George and Alice on the lake and maintains that tone for the rest of the film.
The tremendous flow of the film is augmented by scenes superimposed on each other and slowly fading out of one and into the other. This usually conveys the differences of the characters (social classes, emotional states, etc.) and is very effective without ever being pretentious.

The film is daring and edgy (for it's day) in it's depicting sex and unwed pregnancies. They were both taboo and are less frank than they would be depicted now, thanks to the Production Code, but they are still present in the film.

'Place' also has a bleak comment on the legal system. As the audience, we see what happened on the lake. Though George was intending to kill Alice, he did not. He did not come to her aid, which might have given him a lesser charge and would have avoided the chair.
The prosecution did not prove him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt, yet the jury found George guilty and he was still sentenced to die. The prosecutor's tyrannical approach had a much greater affect on the jury than George's heartfelt honesty on the stand.

Montgomery Clift gives on of his best performances of his all-too-short career as George. He is able to pull off a less-than heroic character and make him very sympathetic despite his many faults. We know little of this soft-spoken character and his back-story, but Clift is able to convey so much just through his eyes. We know exactly what he's thinking without hearing a word. His inner emotions seemingly die after Alice dies. George lost both women that day and the glamorous life he wanted to lead, so he was dead inside.... and resigned to his fate.



His chemistry with Elizabeth Taylor is unmistakable. Taylor is also outstanding, especially since this was one of her first roles in more adult-oriented films.

A Place In The Sun is a definite masterpiece.