top of page

A Place in the Sun (1951) ft. Kieran B.

  • Writer: Thomas Duncan
    Thomas Duncan
  • Apr 15
  • 6 min read

Guest:


Cast:

  • George Stevens, Director

  • Michael Wilson and Harry Brown, Writers

  • William C. Mellor, Cinematography

  • William Hornbeck, Editing

  • Franz Waxman, Music

  • Montgomery Clift as George Eastman

  • Elizabeth Taylor as Angela Vickers

  • Shelley Winters as Alice Tripp

  • Anne Revere as Hannah Eastman

  • Keefe Brasselle as Earl Eastman

  • Fred Clark as Bellows

  • Raymond Burr as R. Frank Marlowe

  • Herbert Heyes as Charles Eastman

  • Shepperd Strudwick as Anthony "Tony" Vickers

  • Frieda Inescort as Mrs. Ann Vickers

  • Kathryn Givney as Louise Eastman


Background:

  • Based on An American Tragedy, the 1925 novel by Theodore Dreiser, and An American Tragedy, the 1926 play by Patrick Kearney, A Place in the Sun was shown at the Cannes Film Festival on April 5, 1951.

  • On a reported budget of $2.3 million, A Place in the Sun would gross roughly $3.5 million in domestic rentals for 1951 finishing as the #9 film of the year in the U.S.

  • Critics were mostly positive at the time and the film was eventually nominated for 9 Oscars including Best Picture, Actor (Clift), Supporting Actress (Winters), and winning for Best Director (Stevens), Screenplay, Cinematography - B&W, Costume Design - B&W, Film Editing, and Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture.

  • In 1991, A Place in the Sun was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry.

  • In 1998, A Place in the Sun was recognized by the AFI on their 100 years...100 movies list at #98.

  • The February 2020 issue of New York Magazine named A Place in the Sun as among "The Best Movies That Lost Best Picture at the Oscars."

  • A Place in the Sun currently holds a 90% among critics on RT, a 76 score on Metacritic, and a 3.9/5 on Letterboxd.


Plot Summary: A Place in the Sun follows a poor young man trying to rise above his circumstances, but his choices lead him down a dark path. Montgomery Clift plays a factory worker, George Eastman, who moves to a new town in search of a better life. He begins a relationship with a kind but insecure coworker, played by Shelley Winters. Their relationship becomes serious, and she soon expects more commitment than he is ready to give.


Everything changes when George meets a beautiful and wealthy woman, played by Elizabeth Taylor. He falls deeply in love with her and becomes obsessed with the glamorous life she represents. As he tries to juggle both relationships, the pressure builds. Faced with a life-altering decision, he considers a desperate and tragic solution.


Did You Know:

  • In her autobiography, Shelley Winters described producer and director George Stevens' way of working: "He would discuss the scene, but not the lines, and would photograph the second or third rehearsal so the scene had an almost improvisatory quality. Stevens would print the first take, then spend the next three hours minutely rehearsing the scene, then film it again. He explained to me that in this way he often got actors' unplanned reactions that were spontaneous and human and often exactly right. And often when actors overintellectualize or plan their reactions, they aren't as good."

  • Shelley Winters was determined to be tested for the part of Alice Tripp. At the time, she was being cultivated as a sex symbol, so the night before she was due to see George Stevens, she dyed her hair brown and bought some especially dowdy clothes, the kind she had seen when she had visited a factory to see how the girls who worked there dressed. She deliberately arrived at the meeting place early and sat in a corner. When Stevens came in, he didn't even notice her until he was about to leave, when he suddenly realized that the mousy girl in the corner was actually Shelley Winters.

  • Shelley Winters developed mixed feelings toward the producer and director George Stevens for making her look so non-glamorous alongside Elizabeth Taylor. Her role, moreover, typecast her in mousy or brassy parts for years. Winters said she drove white Cadillac convertibles (similar to Taylor's in this movie) for years afterward to compensate for her intense feelings of inferiority while making this movie.

  • The novel contains a scene in which Alice Tripp goes to a country doctor and tentatively asks about an abortion. Shelley Winters relates in her autobiography that George Stevens initially planned to drop the scene because "it's rather censorable, but I think if we handle it delicately, it will illuminate the factory girl's terrible plight." Winters was given the new script pages one morning and asked to memorize the lines; Stevens planned to rehearse once, then immediately film the scene for spontaneity. "When he called, 'Action!' I was already crying," Winters wrote. "I twisted my white handkerchief into a shredded ball. The scene was nine minutes long. A full camera load. Boy, did I ever act!" Stevens had Winters do the scene again after letting her realize that tears would only frighten the doctor, and that Alice must try and refrain from crying. "Of course, when we saw the two takes the next day, the one in which I followed his exact direction was remarkable, even if I say so myself. Every time I've seen that scene in a theater, every man in the audience groans and every woman weeps. George had taught me another life-long acting lesson: don't indulge yourself. Make the audience weep."

  • Although this movie was released in 1951, it was shot in 1949. Paramount Pictures already had released its blockbuster Sunset Boulevard (1950) when this movie wrapped. The studio did not want what was sure to be another blockbuster in this movie competing for Oscars with Sunset Blvd., so it waited until 1951 to release this movie. This actually pleased producer and director George Stevens, as he would use the extra time to edit this movie. The painstaking methods of Stevens resulted in a final budget of $2.3 million and more than 400,000 feet of film to edit. Stevens and editor William Hornbeck worked on cutting the footage for more than a year.

  • A favorite movie of director Mike Nichols, who claimed to have seen it over fifty times and who said it was perhaps his biggest influence when directing The Graduate (1967).

  • George Stevens often referred to Technicolor as having an "Oh what a beautiful morning" quality to it, something completely inappropriate to the tone of this movie, which is why it was made in black-and-white.


Best Performance: George Stevens (Director)/Montgomery Clift (George)

Best Secondary Performance: Montgomery Clift (George)/Shelley Winters (Alice)

Most Charismatic Award: Elizabeth Taylor (Angela)

Best Scene:

  • George's First Day

  • George and Alice's First Date

  • George and Angela's Meet Cute

  • George's Birthday

  • At the Doctor

  • At the Lake

  • George on the Stand

  • George and the Priest

Favorite Scene: Meet Cute/George's Birthday/George on the Stand

Most Indelible Moment: George on the Stand/THE END/At the Lake


In Memorium:


Best Lines/Funniest Lines:

Angela: Seems like we always spend the best part of our time just saying goodbye.


George: I love you. I've loved you since the first moment I saw you. I guess maybe I've even loved you before I saw you.


Angela: Men are so disgustingly prompt. I think they do it just to put us women in a bad light.


Angela: Every time you leave me for a minute, it's like goodbye. I like to believe it means you can't live without me.


Angela: I'll love you for as long as I live.

George: Love me for as long as I have left. Then forget me.


Charles Eastman: If he's innocent, I'll get the best defence I can get for him. If he *is* guilty, I won't spend a single cent to save him from the electric chair!


The Stanley Rubric:

Legacy: 5.5

Impact/Significance: 8.67

Novelty: 8.67

Classic-ness: 8.33

Rewatchability: 5.67

Audience Score: 8.3 (82% Google, 84% RT)

Total: 45.14


Remaining Questions:

  • What is the last possible point that a different decision could have been made that would alter the outcome of this story?

  • Does this story change in a post Warren Court era?

  • Montgomery Clift or James Dean?

Comments

© 2023 by Ronny Duncan Studio Network Proudly created with ERDM

bottom of page