DVD : A Place in the Sun

In association with Amazon.com

Rating:

- Oh dear me, no!
I thought this was the DVD of the popular channel 4 show. You can only imagine how disappointed I was when the lovely lady who presents the show failed to appear on my screen. Instead I had to sit through a boring old-fashioned film. I gave it a chance but didn't like it. Maybe it was just the disappointment affecting my judgment...

Rating:

- A Place in Hollywood's Brightest Constellation (but also American literature's)
Thanks to this movie, I'm reading "An American Tragedy," and the prose--900 small-print pages begging for an editor--is driving me crazy. Dreiser's omniscient, overly busy narrator not only insists on both telling us and showing us what each character is thinking but moralizes at every opportunity. And despite the novel's reputation as an example of modern "realism," it's as redundant a form of melodrama as I've ever encountered: not only is every emotion spelled out but it's spelled out again and again.

The film, on the other hand, is a narrative of infinite suggestion and undeniable emotional power. George Stevens' fluid, lyrical camera embraces his primary characters, and the faces of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor tell us practically all we need to know about their feelings. It might seem like this film is worlds apart from "Swing Time," the 1930's Astaire-Rogers film also directed by Stevens. But both films have in common a grace and choreography, an attention to the musical and the poetic that enables them to rise above their sources and their times. George Eastman's tragedy (Clyde Griffith's, in the novel) resonates as memorably as Franz Waxman's haunting score, which somehow suggests that George's fatal passion may have been worth it after all. Credit Stevens for producing one of the screen's most enduring romantic dramas and, for my money, coaxing out of Clift and Taylor their best screen performances.

[Since writing the above, I've finished Part III of Dreiser's novel, the longest section and one that is only briefly referenced in the film. It's brilliant writing (in spite of the style), and tough, disturbing reading, placing the reader in the turbulent stream of Clyde's consciousness. Clyde is far less sympathetically portrayed than in the film with respect to his moral guilt, but virtually all American institutions are equally on trial, the church and its representatives no less than Clyde. And there is no Angela! (Only an impersonal, unsigned note from her that makes Clyde's seem like the most pitiful folly in all American literature.)

Rating:

- A Classic Tragedy
A Place in the Sun (1951) Directed by George Stevens

Genre: Drama / Romance

Cast overview:

Montgomery Clift.... George Eastman

Elizabeth Taylor.... Angela Vickers

Shelley Winters.... Alice Tripp

Runtime: 122 min Color: Black and White

Awards: Won 6 Oscars. Another 7 wins & 7 nominations

George Eastman (Montgomery Clift, who reminded me of James Dean) arrives in Chicago ready to take advantage of a family connection. Ill-educated and previously employed as a hotel bell-hop, George uses a chance meeting with his wealthy uncle to obtain a job. George works hard and wins the admiration of the audience. He secretly romances fellow production line worker Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters), which appears to be the highlight of his life. Soon his social success will become a splitting wedge between the couple. A promotion at work alienates Alice and allows George's attention to turn towards high society's Angela Vickers (Taylor). Torn between his responsibilities to Alice and his love for Angela, George becomes desperate which leads to trouble. A Place In the Sun is a tragic film that creates a wide range of feelings among its audience. George is likeable as well as seriously flawed (by his desperation); Alice is also likeable, but obviously limited in her view of the world; Angela as her name implies appears to be an angel, but with a naughty side. What would you do in his situation? I rated this film four stars as it is a fine example of how a film can hold the audience's attention without bright lights and explosions every two seconds. I also enjoyed the feeling of realism which this movie portrayed.

Rating:

- A Place in the Sun
Although Elizabeth Taylor is excellent, I was very disappointed that the names of the characters and places had been changed since it is supposed to be an adaptation of AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY.
Having different character and place names was most distracting. Also the movie began in the middle of the novel and left out much needed story line.

Rating:

- An Essential
Theodore Drieser was among America's earliest realistic authors, and his massive 1925 AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY, loosely based on real events, was a best-selling shocker filled with premarital sex, abortion issues, and social failures. The novel was filmed in 1931--and Drieser was so outraged that he successfully sued Paramount to force reshoots and a new edit. The result did not please Drieser, Paramount, or the movie-going public, and when censorship began to rear its head both the novel and movie were quietly shelved.

By the late 1940s, however, censorship began to relax, and A PLACE IN THE SUN was among the first films to take advantage of the fact. Unlike the 1931 film, producers did not attempt to film the whole of the novel; they instead focused on the second half. The result was singularly powerful.

George Eastman (Montgomery Cliff) is the poor relation of a wealthy family--and when seeks aid from them he is given a menial job in the factory, where he becomes intimate with factory worker Alice (Shelly Winters.) But when George is suddenly promoted he begins to enter the world of his dreams--and it includes glamorous socialite Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor.) And now only the commonplace and unexpectedly pregnant Alice stands between him and all that he has ever desired.

The script veers toward excess more than once, but director George Stevens and his extraordinary cast carry the film to unexpectedly powerful effect. Previously known as a sex-bomb, Shelly Winters fought hard for the role of Alice and with it gives the first in the series of truly brilliant performances for which she would become so well known. Elizabeth Taylor was one of the leading beauties of the screen, and her acting chops had been in clear evidence for some time before A PLACE IN THE SUN went before the cameras, but it here that she first truly showed what she could do with serious drama; she is flawless. And then there is Montgomery Cliff.

Although Marlon Brando and James Dean made "Method Acting" a household term, Cliff was very much of the same school, and he broke new ground in film several years before either Brando or Dean made the screen. And A PLACE IN THE SUN shows Cliff at his finest, offering a truly amazing, powerful performance as the highly-driven but morally weak George Eastman, stumbling over ever trip-wire society can place in his path. It is a truly devastating performance, gut-wrenchingly painful in honesty, offered without a trace of artifice in evidence.

As the film progresses the moral issues evolve in several very unexpected ways, most particularly as they reference degrees of guilt, premeditation, and at what point intent becomes the same as fact. In the process A PLACE IN THE SUN develops a highly disconcerting "there but for the grace of God go I" quality. I think this particularly true for those among us who can look back upon what might best be called "youthful indiscretions;" we are left to wonder what choices we might have faced if things had been only very slightly different in our lives.

The DVD print is not remastered, but it is pristine, and it comes with a slight but interesting bonus package that includes interviews with the surviving stars. Strongly recommended.

GFT, Amazon Reviewer

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