“THE WORLDS OF DARKNESS AND LIGHT”

By Raymond Benson

The year 1951 was an exceptional one for movies, among them Best Picture Oscar winner An American in Paris; the classic drama A Streetcar Named Desire; two of the best science fiction pictures ever made—The Day the Earth Stood Still and The Thing from Another World; the Bogart and Hepburn adventure, The African Queen; the historical epic Quo Vadis; plus Decision Before Dawn, Death of a Salesman, Detective Story… and that’s counting only Hollywood titles.

And then there is A Place in the Sun, George Stevens’ adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel, An American Tragedy. The film managed to win the Oscars for Best Director (Stevens), Screenplay, Black and White Cinematography (William C. Mellor), Black and White Costume Design (Edith Head), Film Editing, and Scoring (Franz Waxman). Montgomery Clift and Shelley Winters were both nominated for Actor and Actress, respectively, and the production was nominated for Best Picture.

Interestingly, A Place in the Sun was a remake of the 1931 picture An American Tragedy, which was directed by Josef von Sternberg. Since this earlier adaptation received mixed reactions from audiences and critics alike, the original novel was ripe to be re-envisioned and remade for the post-war crowd.

Paramount Presents has issued a new digital restoration on Blu-ray that emphasizes the importance and acclaim A Place in the Sun received at the time. It is still a beloved motion picture today, albeit being a little creaky around the edges. Yes, the film might be considered “dated” in the year 2021 in terms of style and presentation, seventy years after its release, but what it has to say is still relevant to our contemporary world.

George Eastman (Clift) is from the black sheep side of the wealthy, prosperous Eastman family in an unnamed town. He has hitchhiked from Chicago, where his widowed mother runs a low-rent religious charity outfit. We never learn what exactly caused the estrangement of George’s father from rich industrialist Charles Eastman (Herbert Heyes). George is considered by the Eastmans to be from the “wrong side of the tracks.” In other words, he’s not in the same social class. Nevertheless, patriarch Eastman gives George a job in his textile mill, first in the menial labor area. Here, George meets plain-Jane Alice (Winters, playing, at that time, against the type established by her previous work as a sexpot). They begin to date, despite company rules against employees doing so. One thing leads to another, and Alice becomes pregnant. In the meantime, George has become smitten with Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor, who was only 17 when she made the picture!). The Vickers are the other wealthy family in town, and there are often high society pages written about both families. After meeting at an Eastman party, George and Angela begin to date, leaving poor Alice high and dry. George is not only in love with the beautiful and lively Angela, but he sees this as an opportunity to lift himself out of the lower class in which he has lived and into the more prosperous “place in the sun” enjoyed by the white, privileged elite in America. Alice will not stand for George abandoning her, so she gives him the “marry me or else” ultimatum. What happens next is indeed an “American tragedy,” and to reveal all would be a spoiler.

This is not a feel good movie. Whether we’re supposed to feel sorry for George is beside the point of the picture, though. In 1951, audiences perhaps did empathize with him for the predicament in which he finds himself in the last act. Today? Likely not so much. He certainly makes some very bad decisions which bring about his downfall. Is he a victim of his own classlessness, or is he just a cad?

Therein lies the message of the movie, which is indeed an exploration of the dichotomy between America’s working class and the wealthy elite. When bad things happen to the poor, it can be devastating, whereas the rich can usually buy their way out of trouble. Nothing has changed.

Stevens’ direction is masterful. If the performances on display are a result of the director, then Stevens deserved his Oscar. Clift was still a relative newcomer on the scene at the time and displays the smoldering angst of “the Method” acting style that was just becoming a thing on screen. It is said numerous times throughout the various supplemental material on the Blu-ray disk that A Place in the Sun was Elizabeth Taylor’s first “real role” in which she could exhibit her chops after a career as a child actor. She is marvelous as Angela, and her screen charisma is astonishingly striking. Winters, in the role of dowdy Alice, also makes a big impression; however, one might argue that her part is not a lead, but rather a supporting one.

Aside from the acting, the direction is evident in the pacing and moods established by the picture. Takes are long and meticulous, the crossfades are protracted and bordering laborious, and the music underscore is often melodramatically over the top. And yet, all these rather dated sensibilities work in the film’s favor. A Place in the Sun is an emotionally devastating picture, and its power is due to Stevens.

William Mellor’s cinematography is extremely important to the representation of the movie’s themes. All the scenes in Angela’s world are brightly lit, sunshiny, full of life and joy. By contrast, most of the sequences in Alice’s world are dark—very dark—full of shadow and drabness. Two classes. Light and dark. Life and death.

The Blu-ray transfer from a 4K remaster looks marvelous. It comes with an informative audio commentary by George Stevens Jr. and associate producer Ivan Moffat. The enjoyable supplements (ported over from previous home video releases) are a “Filmmaker Focus” on George Stevens from film critic and historian Leonard Maltin; a good featurette on Stevens’ making of the film; and a very welcome collection of “Filmmakers Who Knew Him” AFI interviews about Stevens from the likes of Frank Capra, Warren Beatty, Fred Zinnemann, Joseph L. Mankiewicz, Alan J. Pakula, Robert Wise, and others. Theatrical trailers round out the package.

A Place in the Sun has earned its place in cinematic history. Highly recommended for a look back at the barometer of morality that existed in America in the early 1950s.

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