"Tell mama... tell mama all."


44. A Place in the Sun (1951) (AFI92)

Seriously, and to put it mildly, I am not in the fucking mood. But I'm on such a roll with these movies that I figure I had just better keep going. And frankly I don't think I can ever count on being particularly in the mood to watch The Life of Emile Zola or Central Station or A Place in the Sun, so I'm just going to bite the bullet and do it. A Place in the Sun seems the most painless. I saw it years ago, I think when I was twelve or thirteen we read the book, An American Tragedy in Mr. Biegel's class, and then he rented the movie (pre-video, this was a projectors and film reels) and we watched it in the auditorium. I remember that the movie was much tamer than the book.

Montgomery Clift plays George Eastman, from the poor branch of the Eastman family, leaves his hometown to come East and work for his rich uncle. All he wants is that life, his rich uncle's life, a life of style and glamour, all encompassed in a socialite friend of the family's, Elizabeth Taylor at her most breathtakingly beautiful. Dear Lord, she was an absolute goddess at seventeen.

He's not supposed to mix with any of the girls at work, but he takes up with the drab little factory mouse played by Shelley Winters. This is the start of everything going wrong. He does like her, he really does, but not after he starts getting some attention from the Eastmans at last, not to mention from Elizabeth Taylor. They start going out, and he's still going out with Shelley Winters, and Shelley gets pregnant and she tries to get an abortion and he's going to marry Elizabeth Taylor, and Shelley threatens to let everyone know about their relationship, and what else can the poor man do? Well, I suppose he could stand up and be a man, but George is weak and yearning for this star of a life that is almost in his grasp. So he does the only thing that he can think of, and everyone ends up paying the price.

George Stevens may have ended up changing the name of the movie from An American Tragedy, but frankly? It doesn't stop it from being tragic.

Monty Clift gives one for his best performances as the out-of-place George, Elizabeth Taylor really was once an actress before she turned into a grotesque cartoon, but you almost can't see it because she is so goddamned beautiful, all long eyelashes and bare shoulders, Shelley Winters kind of overdoes it with the drab and the mousy and the kind of pouty with a big sign over her head saying "KNOCKED UP FACTORY DRUDGE", but she does end up being more than just what she seems. She twists that knife, baby. And I always love Raymond Burr in everything.

It certainly is one of the most pro-abortion movies ever made. See what happens when girls go to the doctor and try to tell them that they can't have this baby right now, and they say no no no, you want to have this baby, you'll be a fine, healthy mother! Bad bad things!

A Place in the Sun (1951) (dir. George Stevens)
Watched 10/31/07
Rating: ***
Does it belong on this list? More than I thought it would.