Good 50's Films: A Place in the Sun

1951 Romance Drama
From Paramount Pictures
Directed by George Stevens

Starring
Montgomery Clift
Elizabeth Taylor
Shelley Winters
Anne Revere
Keefe Brasselle
Herbert Heyes
Raymond Burr
Shepherd Strudwick
Kathryn Givney
Frieda Inescourt
Fred Clarke

As I've said once or twice before about other films, this isn't just a good 50's film, it is a great one.  It has something important to say and it not only says it powerfully but it seems as important in 2018 as it was in 1951.  It is an outstanding directorial achievement by a man who knew how to give nothing less and it offers knockout performances from its three leads. 

Based on Theodore Dreiser's critically-acclaimed novel, An American Tragedy, it was filmed under that title in 1931.  Director George Stevens changed the title for this version so as not to confuse it whatsoever with the communist witch hunts which were infecting American society.  He also wanted to inject more romance into the story and knew that his title would achieve the results he wanted.

The film concerns itself with the American dream and its corrupt influences... the obsession with money, sex, social standing and how striving for them can compromise a person's character, ethics, morals, choices.  It is a devastating portrait of a poor, uneducated, religiously-raised young man who, in pursuit of his dreams, makes some bad choices.  George Eastman, as played by Clift, is a likeable enough guy who is portrayed here more as a victim than a monster.  Stevens's great trick was getting audiences to feel for George at some deep emotional level and drawing us into a dangerous web along with him.  

I felt great moments of tension building up and hoping that it wouldn't be resolved the way I fully knew it would.  I wanted George to get the woman he obsessed over.  I wanted him to be filthy rich.  I wanted him to own four tuxedos and have a dresser and acquire the social status he was so desperately seeking.  I guess I always want things to work out for people just the way they want them to.  I root for George.  My heart breaks for him.

  

















He hitchhikes into a town where his wealthy uncle lives in the hope of getting a job at his large manufacturing company.  He is willing to start at the bottom.  While his rich relatives snicker at him, the uncle brings him aboard and it has the look that George may see his dreams come true.

His hoped-for good life is interrupted when George meets two totally different types of women at approximately the same time.  Their contrast is what fires up the film's dramatic tones.

Angela Vickers (Taylor) is young, beautiful, vivacious and confident in who she is.  Her wealthy parents, friends of George's uncle, have given her everything she could possibly want.  It doesn't take long for her to realize she wants George and he wants her so badly that he can barely make a complete sentence.  We know that under normal circumstances, this type of young woman is not available to someone of George's station in life. 

Who is available to George is Alice Tripp (Winters), a frumpy, perpetually down-in-the-dumps coworker.  It is made clear to George on his first day that company policy forbids his dating coworkers.  He should have honored that but remember George makes bad choices.  Soon Alice is so in love with George and can hardly believe someone who looks like she does can get someone who looks like he does.  In other words, she is as floored by her good fortune as George is with Angela.

Alice is pushy but when she becomes pregnant, it becomes worse.  She becomes clingy and works overtime in trying to get George to see what a wonderful relationship they have.  Not knowing it's George's birthday, his uncle asks him to stop by for a chat about his proposed upward mobility, which, of course, George has no intention of missing.  Alice is distraught because she had a little celebration planned.  George stays longer than anyone thought he would (frolicking with Angela), which further miffs Alice but she goes positively bonkers when she sees a newspaper picture of George and Angela in a motorboat laughing their pretty heads off.

The noirish third act commences when Alice phones George while he is seated at dinner with all the rich folks.  Alice (foreshadowing Alex Forrest in Fatal Attraction) tells George in no uncertain terms that he is to leave his fancy-ass gathering immediately, come to her and they will marry that day.

Amid some shenanigans he drives Alice to a lake and gets her to agree to go out in a rowboat.  He gives a false name to the boat owner.  He is planning to drown Alice, whom he knows can't swim but at the last moment can't bring himself to do it.  (The use of the plaintive call of loons is most compelling in this scene.)  But misfortune was their lot and Alice stood up jerkily and the boat capsized, sending both of them into the water.  She does indeed drown.  He does not.  They fell on opposite sides of the boat and he was not able to reach her.  After he swims to shore, he stumbles upon a campsite and is chagrined when a flashlight is shined in his face.

It doesn't take long for the district attorney (a snarling Burr) to nab George and watching him fit all the pieces together adds to the  tension.  The trial is damaging to George and he is found guilty, his American dream exploding.  Angela visiting him for the last time in his prison cell, telling him she'll love him forever, is so touching.  The last we see of George is on his way to the electric chair.

Stevens was pleased with the results.  He was especially upbeat over the romantic angle he had orchestrated.  He thought it was key to the story.  The first Clift-Taylor love scene has become quite a famous one.  Lasting several minutes it is done entirely in closeup with a six-inch lens.  To say we are in their beautiful faces is an understatement.   She is strikingly tender and he is so fired up.  The dialogue is all rushed and passionate.  I always crack up a little when she (at 17, mind you) whispers tell Mama.  And that kiss was all it needed to be.  

The legendary director had made some good films before this one... Gunga Din, Penny Serenade, Woman of the Year, Talk of the Town, The More the Merrier, to name a few.  He was known for his sharp eye which enhanced his visual storytelling.  Someone once said he only cared about what he saw in a viewfinder.  He was a stickler for perfection, which any of his actors could attest to.  He often made his actors rehearse without dialogue so that they would get a feeling and a look for a part.  He was tough on actors but few would deny that he didn't get some of the best performances out of them that they ever gave.

Clift had only made four films but Stevens had been keen on him since he saw his sensitive portrayal in Red River (1948).  There was something about Clift's look, particularly in closeup that Stevens thought would be so right for his film.  Then he saw the young actor as the fortune-hunting suitor in The Heiress and he knew his hunch was right.  The chief difference in the two roles was that George would be achingly in love in Place whereas he only wanted the fortune in The Heiress.

For his part, Clift had never wanted a role so badly.  In fact, he didn't want most of the parts he'd already played.  He had little respect for movie-making and the directors who made them and as a result he was a handful on movie sets.  What made his acting so rich was his extraordinary sensitivity and how he learned about his characters from the inside out.  He needed to know everything whether what he discovered showed up in the film or not.    

Clift played characters who were loners, withdrawn but intense, even brooding, at great odds with the status quo.  They never had a lot to say.  Clift understood these people well.  He was smarter than George Eastman but they shared the same hostility but not on the same subjects.  What he and his director had in common was a love of the details.  Both would work on the smallest threads in a scene. 

George was a little more passive than Clift.  But when the actor's hackles were raised, one wouldn't think of him as passive at all.  He liked Winters but thought she was portraying Alice all wrong.  He not only didn't mind telling Stevens about it, he was resolute about the director changing her interpretation.  Clift thought she was too downbeat and unsympathetic, basically saying the audience would say at her death scene... good, what a downer.  Who cares?  To be honest, I agreed with him.  The character annoyed me.  It didn't matter to me that she was supposed to.  Clift wanted (Gene Kelly's wife) Betsy Blair to play Alice in her sweet, wistful way, finding it a wonderful contrast to George and evoking more sympathy at her demise.  Stevens disagreed completely but let Clift have his say.

When Clift was told Taylor was going to be one of his two female costars, he asked who she was.  Imagine.  Some industry folk thought Stevens was crazy to hire MGM's spoiled 17-year old princess who many thought was little more than a beautiful face.  History would show that A Place in the Sun was her first real inkling of what real acting was all about.  It was certainly her first important film.  What Stevens told the naysayers was that he needed Angela to be played by someone who was breathtakingly beautiful.  What George Eastman saw in her, that beauty that made him take leave of his senses, the audience had to see as well.  George also had to be beautiful.  The only things that would have attracted Angela in a man was status, money and beauty.  George didn't have the first two.

For my money, seeing the two of them in the same frame was about the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen.  For added allure, they even looked alike.  Both were darkly beautiful with gorgeous blue eyes (hers, of course, had a violet look), thick lashes 
and those black sable brows.  When they quietly stared at one another, the chemistry was quite intense. 

Along with all the compliments both were very misunderstood in their private lives (which strengthened their bond, of course).  They were complicated and wound up.  They also, rather alarmingly, cackled when they laughed.  They would suffer in later life with a host of illnesses.  Both would also become alcoholics and addicted to painkillers.

They fell in love on the set of this film.  Despite their 11-year age difference, they both knew they were two peas in a pod.  She fell madly, hopelessly in love but she had no idea of the one secret he was holding that would keep him from becoming her husband.  To her credit, when she found out he was gay, it would not matter.  She would simply go on loving him passionately as her dearest friend.  It would never change throughout his short life.  (She would also marry for the first time shortly after the film wrapped.)

Despite Stevens hiring her for her youthful beauty, he also knew that Angela was spoiled, rich and pampered and who better to play her than Taylor?   But he had troubles with her throughout most of the filming.  She knew how to give effective line readings but Stevens wanted more.  He demanded take after take so that he could get the voice inflections and physical gestures he wanted.  He thought he could turn her into a decent actress but didn't anticipate the hard time she would give him.  So frustrated was he with her at one point that he blurted out look, this isn't Lassie Come Home to A Place in the Sun.

What saved the day was that Clift was well aware of her shortcomings as an actress but he also, as Stevens had, saw potential.  He took her under his wing (a place she wanted to be) and she said he taught her more about acting than anyone she ever knew.  

Winters was not Stevens's first choice.  She only got it after Gloria Grahame's home studio, RKO, refused to loan her out.  Contrary to my and Clift's opinions, Winters thought she turned in the best acting of her career.  Stevens also thought it was a smashing performance and so did the Oscar folks who nominated her for best actress.  In her autobiography she said the only thing that annoyed her was how she was made to look compared to how Taylor looked.  She was equally annoyed that Angela drove around in a white Cadillac convertible.  As a result, Winters says she owned a series of white Cadillac convertibles. 

Winters and Stevens agreed that Clift was the best actor they ever worked with.  She would work with Stevens twice more, winning an Oscar for their The Diary of Anne Frank (1959).  Taylor would also work with Stevens twice more, the most famous film of which was Giant (1956).

The supporting cast is also perfection.  Anne Revere, who won an Oscar playing Taylor's mother in 1944's National Velvet, was properly evangelical as Clift's mother in her couple of scenes.  What she filmed was a larger part but most of her scenes were eliminated.  She was a former communist who refused to name names during the Red Scare and she was ostracized from the industry, resulting in this being her last film for 19 years.

Keefe Brasselle was obviously hired to play the cousin due to his striking resemblance to Clift.  Burr might have been a touch over the top as the gruff prosecutor but still utterly watchable.  I wonder if someone saw his performance here and thought of him for the future Perry Mason.  As those rich, snobby folks, Herbert Heyes
and Kathryn Givny shine as Clift's uncle and aunt as do Shepherd Strudwick and Frieda Inescourt as Taylor's parents.

Exterior filming took place in and around Lake Tahoe, Echo Lake and Cascade Lake.  The black and white film had a beautiful look.

At Oscar time, A Place in the Sun wasn't forgotten.  While Clift and Winters didn't win their Oscars, nor did the picture itself, it still copped six deserving awards... Stevens's direction, writing, cinematography, original score, editing and costume design.  It was also selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being culturally, historically or aesthetically significant.  If you've never seen it, you must.

Check out the trailer:

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