A masterpiece showing the tragic disintegration of the American Dream, George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun more than deserves its legendary status.
The Production: 5/5
A masterpiece showing the tragic disintegration of the American Dream, George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun more than deserves its legendary status. A somewhat brightened adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy, this second film version of the novel presents two of the most beautiful people ever to have appeared in the movies – Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor – and sets them on the course to the joys and sorrows of young life and young love. The triangle love story and its aftermath may seem like overly familiar territory now, but George Stevens’ presentation is anything but rudimentary.
George Eastman (Montgomery Clift), a poor, uneducated nephew of rich industrialist Charles Eastman (Herbert Heyes), arrives in town eager to work and not expecting any handouts. Starting on the bottom rung of the ladder, George’s impressive work ethic and modesty eventually find his uncle allowing him entrance into the upper echelons of the town’s social set. In his first lonely months in town, he had begun seeing drab factory worker Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters), but once admitted into his uncle’s social connections, he meets and falls head over heels for Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor), an exquisitely beautiful girl on the verge of womanhood. Angela returns George’s affections and all roads seem open to him until he learns from Alice that she’s pregnant and expecting him to marry her to legitimize their child. Suddenly, George’s future, once so promising and upward trending, now begins crumbling before his eyes.
The Oscar-winning screenplay by Harry Brown and Michael Wilson retains George’s ambition but paints his personality as lacking guile and a certain amount of calculation. But the real depth to be found in the film is laid in it through George Stevens’ overly detailed direction and the exquisite camerawork of William C. Mellor, both men earning Oscars for their contributions to the final product. With a combination of long shots and extreme close-ups where we can read thoughts and emotions in the eyes, particularly of the two intense lovers and in the continual use of opticals where two or three different shots are overlaid on one another, the movie reaches a depth of feeling and narrative complexity that makes its surfacely simple love triangle into something far more compelling. The depth of shadows in the photography also reflect the shadows in the soul of its protagonist George Eastman, a young man striving to do right by everyone but one who must moodily confront bad choices and even worse luck in his striving to find his own place in the sun (and poor George can never escape the lure of the Vickers family: a neon sign VICKERS shines brightly into his bedroom window every night). The screenwriters lay on the snobbishness of upper class consciousness very thickly throughout the film: both the Eastmans and the Vickerses make a point of George’s lack of class and breeding: “not our sort,” they sniff haughtily though they do soften somewhat in their snobbery once they get to know him. Stevens also uses a couple of montages very well: in the early going we see the months pass as George begins to adapt to his new job and working conditions and later on at the courtroom trial as witnesses for the prosecution parade by in quick succession as we remember their presences during major moments in the story.
Montgomery Clift walks away with the acting honors for the film as the eager but conflicted George earning his second career Oscar nomination for his emotionally rangy acting as George reaches the highs, the lows, and everything in between as he seesaws between his two decidedly opposite love interests. Shelley Winters as the desperately needy and increasingly demanding mother-to-be earned her first Oscar nomination here while Elizabeth Taylor played for the first time a young lady of some depth fairly bursting to enter womanhood. Raymond Burr comes on strong (possibly a bit too strong) as a district attorney determined to tie the noose around George’s neck while Fred Clark plays George’s more understanding defense attorney. Oscar-winner Anne Revere has a couple of revelatory scenes as George’s fervently religious mother while Keefe Brasselle offers the other side of the George coin as Earl Eastman, George’s more educated, more well-groomed cousin. Familiar faces like Shepperd Studwick, Frieda Inescort, Herbert Heyes, and Kathryn Givney play the Eastman and Vickers elders. Look fast and you’ll note Kathleen Freeman as one of Alice’s fellow shop workers and Paul Frees as a priest trying to ease George through his trial and its aftermath.
Video: 4/5
3D Rating: NA
The film’s 1.37:1 theatrical aspect ratio is faithfully rendered in this 1080p transfer using the AVC codec. At its best, the images are sharp and very detailed, but with all of the deep shadows and scenes filmed in very dark environs, black levels are sometimes crushed and are not always as inky as one might like. The transfer is very clean, however, and does not suffer from age-related dust and dirt problems. The movie has been divided into 13 chapters.
Audio: 4.5/5
The mono sound is offered in a DTS-HD Master Audio 5.1 configuration. If there is meant to be surround information, I didn’t note any, but the sound offers full and very appealing fidelity. The dialogue is always easy to discern even with the Oscar-winning Franz Waxman themes and pop music of the era in the background, and sound effects offer equally good fidelity. There are no instances of anomalies like hiss, pops, crackle, and flutter.
Special Features: 4/5
Audio Commentary: George Stevens Jr. and the film’s associate producer Ivan Moffat offer brief, pertinent comments at certain points of the movie. There are large gaps between their statements, but whenever they do speak, it’s something interesting.
Filmmaker Focus (7:35, HD): critic and historian Leonard Maltin offers an introduction and brief analysis of the film giving a short biography of director George Stevens and deep praise for its three top-billed stars.
George Stevens and His Place in the Sun (22:22, SD): discussing the film’s genesis, execution, and reception are producer Ivan Moffat, George Stevens, Jr., Elizabeth Taylor, and Shelley Winters.
George Stevens: Filmmakers who Knew Him (45:28, SD): comments on the man and his films (including A Place in the Sun, Alice Adams, Shane, Gunga Din, Giant, and others) are provided by Warren Beatty, Frank Capra, Rouben Mamoulian, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Alan Pakula, Antonio Willami, Robert Wise, and Fred Zinnemann.
Theatrical Trailer (2:39, SD)
Paramount Trailers: Shane, Sunset Blvd.
Digital Code: there are digital codes in the package, but the one in my review copy was not for A Place in the Sun.
Overall: 4.5/5
George Stevens’ A Place in the Sun is one of the glories of 1950s filmmaking. Easily superior to the 1931 original version of An American Tragedy and featuring a great performance by Montgomery Clift and the blossoming of the acting talent of Elizabeth Taylor, this is one film that should be in every movie lover’s library. Highly recommended!
A Place in the Sun
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Matt has been reviewing films and television professionally since 1974 and has been a member of Home Theater Forum’s reviewing staff since 2007, his reviews now numbering close to three thousand. During those years, he has also been a junior and senior high school English teacher earning numerous entries into Who’s Who Among America’s Educators and spent many years treading the community theater boards as an actor in everything from Agatha Christie mysteries to Stephen Sondheim musicals.
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