A Place in the Sun **** (1951, Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters) – Classic Movie Review 3351

Director George Stevens’s then daring 1951 film of Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel An American Tragedy was once greatly acclaimed and admired but now it has faded and is unfairly overlooked. The overfree screenplay is based on Patrick Kearney‘s play version as well as the novel.

It won six Oscars, including Best Director for Stevens for his careful direction, Best Screenplay for Michael Wilson and Harry Brown for their screenplay adaptation, Best Black-and-White Cinematography for William C Mellor for his striking cinematography, Best Scoring for Franz Waxman for his stirring score, Best Black-and-White Costume Design for Edith Head) and Best Film Editing for William Hornbeck.

But it did not win Best Picture (it missed out to An American in Paris) or, surprisingly, any acting awards. It did however win the 1952 Golden Globe for Best Motion Picture – Drama.

Montgomery Clift stars as a young, social-climbing poor-boy factory hand called George Eastman who accidentally kills Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters), the plain, pregnant mill-worker he is involved with, when he comes across rich, lovely socialite Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor) at a party at the house of his uncle Charles (Herbert Heyes).

Clift and Winters were Best Actor and Best Actress nominees and, though they failed to won Oscars, their resounding acting now perhaps seems to be the best thing among many intriguing ones about this fascinating movie.

In all, costume designer Head won a record total of eight Oscars.

Winters hated to look so unglamorous alongside Taylor and her role typecast her in similar mousy or brassy parts for years.

The box office failure of the 1931 adaptation of An American Tragedy prompted a search for a new title. A $100 reward was offered for the best but after Stevens’s associate Ivan Moffat suggested A Place in the Sun he never received the $100.

When Taylor and Clift’s beach idyll was filmed in October at Lake Tahoe, California, the crew had to hose snow off the ground. Clift put Taylor at ease, and the two began a life-long friendship.

Anne Revere, who plays Clift’s mother, was a descendant of American Revolution hero Paul Revere. She became a victim of the McCarthy blacklisting because of her supposed liberal politics and did not appear in another movie until 1970.

The story is based on the true story of Chester Gillette, who murdered his pregnant girlfriend in 1906, was tried, convicted and executed in 1908.

© Derek Winnert 2016 Classic Movie Review 3351

Link to Derek Winnert’s home page for more reviews: http://derekwinnert.com/