A Place In The Sun

George Stevens' much-praised 'A Place in the Sun' is based on Theodore Dreiser's 1925 novel 'An American Tragedy', itself based on a true-life incident from 1906. Montgomery Clift's performance could be said to have captured a restless spirit among young people in the post-war era, which ultimately birthed the '60s Counterculture. And although the character he plays, George Eastman, is blessed with many eminently enviable qualities, being exquisitely gentle and refined; as well as extraordinarily handsome, it could with some justification be said at a certain stage in this saga, he loses his moral bearings with tragic results. And the fact that his mother's Christian moral values are hardly greatly evident with regard to his behaviour during the course of the movie - in fact this same behaviour is largely dictated by selfishness as soon as he finds himself in the ascendant in terms of his career - is significant...leastwise as I see it. And this is indeed a tragedy, given the character's great personal sweetness and tenderness of manner...and few could have conveyed its enormity with such magnetic power and subtlety as Clift. And of course, 'A Place in the Sun' is primarily a romantic picture, featuring two of the cinema's most photogenic actors in the shape of Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, whose first meeting is wonderfully memorable. While Clift's scenes with Shelley Winters are superbly well acted, with Winters providing a beautifully nuanced performance as the sweet and simple girl he courts, before moving on to the lovely Angela Vickers (Taylor). So, primarily this is a big epic romantic tragedy with wonderful music and performances...and one of George Stevens' masterpieces.