Rating:  -
Excellent movie about the tragic consequences of pushing too hard to obtain the american dream. Montgomery Clift gives a realistic performance as the poor kid who makes it to the top at a high price. Liz Taylor is believable as the rich beauty who falls in love with Clift, and Shelly Winters is especially memorable as the poor factory worker who gets shoved aside by Clift after he meets Taylor. Beautifully made movie that makes you really get into the mind and heart of its protagonists. Highly Recommended.
Rating:  -
It was probably inevitable that "An American Tragedy," in its evolution to screen, would become more about the doomed love affair of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor than the moral and ethical dilemmas that really form the foundation of Theodore Dreiser's novel. After all, doomed love is a bigger sell, especially when you have the romantic faces of Clift and Taylor swooning together in extreme close-up.
I'm not a fan of doing book to movie comparisons. I figure that film and literature are two different art forms, so I shouldn't compare their rendering of the story anymore than I would compare the same story as presented in a painting as opposed to a ballet. So I tried to take the film on its own merits (admittedly difficult to do, since I watched the movie on the same day I finished the book), but even at that, I think the movie falls short.
Clift plays George Eastman, poor nephew to a rich, socially elite family in a small New York state factory town. He's been invited by his uncle to come and work in the Eastman factory, giving him an entre into a world of luxury that has always been out of his grasp due to his family's humble position (they run a mission and preach on the streets). George strikes up a love affair with Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters), a girl who works with him in the factory, but his attentions for her quickly fade when he becomes interested in Angela Vickers, another member of the rich set, played by Liz Taylor. Complications ensue, and George finds himself and his situation spiralling drastically out of control, with an ending more tragic than he ever thought possible.
George Stevens directs the film with a sure hand, and there are some breathtaking displays of directorial skill. For example, one that stands out in my mind comes when the camera focuses on a radio reporting a possible murder, while the young, rich kids with whom George has struck up a friendship goof off in the water in the background. There are also some great uses of dissolve editing, though the technique is somewhat overused.
But there are many problems with the film, notably its pacing. Much time is spent on George's love triangle with Alice and Angela, while the script races through the trial and George's ultimate fate, as if the screenwriter realized he only had two hours to tell his story when he'd already wasted an hour and a half on front-end material. Rushing through the end blunts much of the story's original intent and power, as that is where the majority of moral questions arise.
Also, the character Shelley Winters plays is so drab and mousy, that one doesn't understand why George would entangle himself with her in the first place. But Clift does a great job with the lead role, delivering a performance of raw nerve.
It befuddles me somewhat as to why this movie is quite so acclaimed. I can only imagine that its reception has to do with cultural moods at the time it was released and that it just hasn't aged well. It came out in 1951, a big year for literary adaptations ("A Streetcar Named Desire" and "Death of a Salesman" were both given big-screen treatments that year), and you only need to compare "Sun" to "Streetcar" to see how short it falls at capturing the essence of a ture literary classic.
Grade: B-
Rating: -
This film is a classic. The reviewer who says this film is overrated due to it being a 1950s film is wrong. He only wishes he could land a gorgeous beauty like Elizabeth Taylor. He only wishes he was as handsome as Montgomery Clift.
Miss Taylor is now using scenes from this movie to sell her new perfume. She has been working hard for AIDS research and awareness for two decades. Brava to her!!!
Rating:  -
I'm not paying almost 30 dollars for a standard format DVD. I have this on VHS in standard and that does me fine until they release the DVD in widescreen. I can't believe people would pay that amount for something they can see on cable in standard format or buy the VHS at about half the price. Being deaf the extra features don't add anything because they are very, very rarely captioned.
Rating: -
It has been my observation that there is a tendency among reviewers, both professional and amateur, to overrate movies from the fifties and earlier simply because they were hits in their time.
It's almost as if reviewers consider these movies to be "sacred" entities, that it would in fact be a mortal sin for them to fairly criticize them by today's standards. Perhaps there is also the fear of going against the grain of public opinion, being critical of a movie that the masses continue to hold up as "great". In few cases is this more evident than for the movie "A Place in the Sun", which, by the way, charts at #92 on AFI's list of the 100 greatest American movies of all time.
I have no problem in honoring movies from the early years of Hollywood for being significant or progressive for their time (like "All Quiet on the Western Front"), anymore than I do in honoring Vivaldi for his work in advancing music prior to Beethoven. But I do believe reviewers would do potential viewers a great service by realistically comparing older movies, particularly dramas, with their modern-day counterparts.
That being said, if the movie "A Place in the Sun" was remade using modern day actors and performed in precisely the same manner and style today, do you think anyone would realistically give it the kind of ratings seen on this forum (4 1/2 stars)? I think not. Instead, it would be ridiculed as being predictable, melodramatic, and dreadfully dull, and it would most likely receive a deservedly lower rating (not to mention an overall "thumbs down").
It should be pointed out that the one semi-bright spot in this movie is Elizabeth Taylor's typically radiant performance, but even that effort falls well short of making this a good movie. Montgomery Clift, bless his heart, has to be one of the most uncharismatic and overrated actors ever to come out of that era, and in this movie his character comes across as wholly unlikable and unsympathethic. It reminded me a great deal of his similarily forgettable performance in "From Here to Eternity", and I can only ponder that his relatively good looks got him the parts for these and other movies in which he has appeared.
Previous reviewers have stated that this is an epic love story, but can anyone who has truly been in love and knows the kind of buoyant emotions such a wondrous state of being can evoke realistically claim that Clift's character was in love when, in fact, he wanted to DROWN Shelley Winters? This may be an epic "obsession" story, but an epic "love" story it is not. And neither is it a great, nor even a good, movie. Perhaps it was in 1951, but it fails to make the grade in 2003.
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