HotToastyRag A Place in the Sun is one of the most beautiful, glamorous classic films of all time. Yes, there are epics like Gone with the Wind, but for quiet, black and white splendors, you'll be hard pressed to find a more beautiful film than A Place in the Sun.Montgomery Clift is a man in pursuit of the American Dream. He's a hard worker, but he can't quite shake where he comes from. In his loneliness, he enters into a relationship with Shelley Winters. She's common, and she knows she's not beautiful, so she's constantly afraid he'll leave her. Enter Elizabeth Taylor.Monty steps into the high-class world and falls in love with the lifestyle, the glamour, the freedom, and the girl. Liz is perfection, the apex of the American Dream. The only question is how badly does he want her? What will he do to get her? Screenwriters Harry Brown and Michael Wilson had their work cut out for them. The book was titled An American Tragedy and it was 900 pages. I've read the book, and I don't know how they sifted through the tome and still kept their sanity.Winner of Oscars in Directing, Cinematography, Costume Design, Editing, Original Score, and Adapted Screenplay, and nominated for Actor, Actress, and Picture, A Place in the Sun is a must-see classic. The tragic story stands the test of time beautifully, and it's always wonderful to watch gorgeous people in gorgeous clothes up on the big screen, set to a lovely score.

frankwiener Alert: This review may contain spoilers.This film is based on Theodore Dreiser's classic novel, "An American Tragedy", so don't expect a comedy. Dreiser was inspired by the true 1906 murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette at Big Moose Lake in the Adirondack Mountains of upstate New York. Chester was employed at his family's woman's apparel factory in the town of Cortland, and the trial occurred in the nearby town of Herkimer, New York. Although the film was shot at three different lakes in California, including Tahoe, there is no reason to believe that director George Stevens intended to change the locale of the novel from two small, industrial mill towns in upstate New York to California as several reviewers here believe to be the case. According to my research, California never had an electric chair but New York did.As the beginning of the massive 800 page novel is missing from the movie, some essential information is omitted, possibly by design, that exposes very early the central character's very weak moral foundation, a highly ironic circumstance when we consider that his parents had devoted their entire lives to saving lost souls in their urban American religious mission. As a result, the viewers are forced to judge George's moral character on their own as events unfold before them, and this, at times, can be a true mental challenge.Like the real-life Chester Gillette, George Eastman (Montgomery Clift), of poor and humble background, is hired on the assembly line of his family's apparel factory and, defying strict company policy, becomes sexually involved with a co- worker, the plain, dowdy, whining, and downright annoying Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters), impregnating her somewhere along the way. In the meantime, George is promoted to an office position and gains entry to the aristocratic social circles of his wealthy, industrialist relatives, where he meets the beautiful, outgoing, and sophisticated Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor). From the start, George and Angela are strongly attracted to each other and director Stevens, who deservedly won an Oscar for this film, highlights the passionate intensity of their relationship by the use of extreme close-up and a dreamlike musical accompaniment that becomes their mystifying, other worldly theme song for the rest of the picture. Well done, George Stevens!Now carrying his child, frumpy and irritating Alice threatens to expose him instantly to his newly gained, elite society unless he immediately marries her. Instead, George decides to row her out to an isolated section of Loon Lake where he plans to drown her. In the rowboat, Alice becomes agitated and accidentally capsizes the boat on her own. The viewers never witness George deliberately acting to harm her, and we never see him exerting any effort to save her either.Instead of coming clean with the authorities about the incident, as he should have, George flees from the scene and attempts to hide his involvement but is soon caught and implicated in her death. The District Attorney (Perry Mason--oh sorry, Raymond Burr!) is determined not only to convict George of murder but to send him to the electric chair (NY, folks, not CA!). Unfortunately for George, the DA's ruthless obsession, the mounting circumstantial evidence, the prevailing working class sentiments of the town, and his own testimony on the stand combine to persuade the jury against him.Ms. Winters, who was nominated for an Oscar for her role here, so successfully creates Alice as a walking stick of chalk screeching across a slate blackboard that she even tests the moral fiber of the viewer during George's decision making process of what the heck to do with her. In the rowboat, the prospect of spending his life with Alice rather than Angela is absolutely excruciating torture. I felt this intensely, but I still would have come clean about the incident with the authorities rather than running away, as George did. Would I have tried to find Alice under the water? Maybe for a few minutes. The role of Alice Tripp was only the start of a long and very successful string of somewhat unsympathetic, disagreeable characters for Shelley Winters, including those of "Lolita", "Diary of Anne Frank" (Oscar winning), and "Patch of Blue" (Oscar winning), only to mention a few. In this film, she found her true calling as an actor. Good for you, Shelley.If George didn't decide to break strict company rules, a very small and seemingly insignificant act, his life might have turned out very differently, but he was somehow fated for this end. Regardless of the specific turn of events, I was led to believe that he would have ended up in the very same place. How about you?

Python Hyena A Place in the Sun (1951): Dir: George Stevens / Cast: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Raymond Burr, Herbert Heyes: Compelling yet depressing classic with a title that symbolizes the need for grace after an attempt to conceal sin. Montgomery Clift plays George Eastman who arrives in town to work for his wealthy uncle. Central plot regards his forbidden relationship with a female working there played by Shelley Winters whom he gets pregnant. Elizabeth Taylor plays Angela Vickers, a society girl who Eastman also gets involved with. When Winters pushes for marriage thus threatening his job he plots her death. This happens by accident but with his path uncovered he is sought after as a murderer. Raymond Burr makes an effective appearance as a prosecutor out to see Eastman go to the electric chair. Herbert Heyes plays the wealthy uncle disturbed at the news, which began when Eastman and Vickers began courting each other. Director George Stevens weaves a fine line between what begins as an innocent romantic flick to becoming a dark conquest full of consequences. The locations are flaring with life as the upper class that Eastman has become accustom to attend dances in mansions and relax at resorts while Winters is positioned outside depressed and trying to figure out how to reel Eastman in. We reap what we sow and Eastman with his place in the sun exposing his sin. Score: 8 / 10

lasttimeisaw George Steven's high-calibre drama, a six-times Oscar winner (including BEST DIRECTOR and SCREENPLAY), is a tellingly puissant moral lesson adapted from Theodore Dreiser's novel, AN American TRAGEDY, inspired by real event. A working-class young man George Eastman (Clift), comes to town to work for his industrialist uncle Charles Eastman (Heyes), strives to fight for a better future, but begins to bog down into a dilemma when his low-class girlfriend Alice Tripp (Winters) gets pregnant and puts pressure on an immediate marriage, whilst a gorgeous socialite Angela Vickers (Taylor), whom he secretly admires, surprisingly reciprocates her affections.Any advice to solve George's dilemma? Not hindsight wisdom, yet the truth is, if that (highly uncommon) scenario would happen to anybody, under such a tempting circumstances, a rosy future with the perfect woman a man could ever dream of, the idea of dispatching the poor Alice would lurk around pretty certainly to any morally deficient social climbers, so despite the horrific act (Alice's pregnancy has never been put into foreground to exacerbate the crusade against George during the trial), we audience tends to sympathise with him, plus, the film intentionally omits what happened after the boat was capsized, in the eyes of viewers, it is an emotionally perturbed Alice herself causes the capsize of the boat at the first place, only in the court, George tries to re-enact what was happening then, even his side of story is scarcely credible, there is tiny possibility that he is "innocent", and what's more disturbing is that, subconsciously, we do hope he is!That's where lies the strength of this slow-burner, as George could be anything but "innocent", simply because even if he had not done anything to harm Alice, just lets it happen when a landlubber like her was drowning to her death, is another form of murder. He has the perfect motive, and his not-doing is exactly the helping hand to facilitate Alice's death.Why then, our commiserations are more inclining to George than to Alice, first of all, it is Montgomery Clift's unrivalled and wonderfully consistent performance, a misfit being ricocheted onto a wrong echelon, who awkwardness is painfully visible. Just when he decides to accept the reality to stay where he belongs, a windfall sweeps off his feet, which ensues a turbulent battle of human frailties and moral senses underneath of his humble physique and perpetually preoccupied minds. Mr. Clift even masks any edgy aspects of George's personality, to make his actions even more ambivalent, either he is a ruthless schemer putting on a masterful front to play meek and try to evade punishment, or he is a tragic character, passively devoured by the twist of fate. And even up until the final scene, we can not tell which one is the real George Eastman, in my book, that's a top-drawer achievement for the thespian.Secondly, Ms. Winters' Alice, exists more than just the unfortunate prey, when a woman has to literally blackmail her boyfriend with pregnancy into marrying her, apart from blaming an unjust social environment towards women, the truth is, they will never reach a happy ending, Alice is miserable but equally as selfish as George, bovine and unglamorous, the flagrant contrast between her and Angela, is another excuse for George's road-of-no-return. A trifle of misogyny and female objectification can be discerned, but in Ms. Winters' defence, she delivers a palpably soul- pulverising coup-de-maître, notably in the scene with the doctor to insinuate an abortion, and her final in-your-face accusation and hyperbole on the boat.There is a 16-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, a child star transmogrifies to a fabulous screen goddess overnight, her voice is crispy and untainted, so is her off-screen rapport and affection to Mr. Clift, mirroring Angela's undying love for George, an avatar of perfection too good to be true in reality, extant on the silver celluloid only. It is her angelic face and seductive kiss remain in George's last moments, something worth dying for in its literal meaning. Oscar-winner, the limelight-stealing character actress Anne Revere has a small cameo as George's religious mother, whose film career ended abruptly after this due to being on the infamous "Hollywood blacklist", which prompted a nearly 20-years gap of absence in her filmography.Mr. Stevens takes great patience and pain to elicit striking endeavour from his cast, and his unpretentious method of channeling the narrative arc with a deft hand of juxtaposed editing, pays off handsomely in its end-product, especially considering how they could manage to sidestep the Hays Code while retain its dramatic pathos and inspire contemplation of its thorny subject matter, a Black-and-White classic truly worth its fame and praise.