Is This The Place?
On a movie that has been orbiting me for years.
Slowly, unsurely, as long as I’ve had a grasp of my language, I’ve been building a personal canon: for movies and for books, for songs and for albums and for bands, for bars and for candy bars, for 30 Rock episodes, for Ikea desk chairs, for anything in which one can compare. I’m sure that we all do this, to varying extents. It’s not dissimilar from ranking things or from developing taste, but canon building I see as recording history, as telling your story. What works of art that you identify with help explain who you are?
Shortly into 2020, when I suddenly had more free time available and more yearning for growth and understanding, I started reading more, and reading with intention. The same goes for my viewing habits, which took a turn for the repertory and the historical. Slowly, my canon started changing and evolving (which it always is, of course) and I kept finding a singular point of reference for all of the things I was consuming. Mentioned in memoirs, in biographies, in history books, in criticism and reviews, in references and in call backs. One movie, one group of actors, one director, one moment in an industry; there seemed to be a sun that everything I was reading was orbiting around, and I knew that I had to find my place in its light.
At a burgeoning moment in which American screen acting would be changed forever, as described in great detail in Isaac Butler’s The Method: How the Twentieth Century Learned to Act (2022); at a post-war media moment soaked in commercial success, but also in a dark, grim noir and melodrama, as detailed in Foster Hirsch’s Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties (2023); at a moment when a young immigrant American started discovering movies and movie palaces, on his way to becoming one of the most celebrated film and stage directors, as told in Mark Harris’ Mike Nichols: A Life. Many people and places and things were in flux, already happening, or waiting to be ignited, and many of them found their inspiration, their start, their comparison point, and their climax in George Stevens’s A Place in the Sun (1951).
The film, an adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s 1925 novel An American Tragedy, takes place in (then) modern times as a poor young-man with a million-dollar-name hitchhikes his was to “the big city”, where his uncle has invited him to acquire a real job at the family factory — a business that this young man otherwise would never have had a part in. George, our handsome young man, is, we’re told, ambitious and hard-working, though he doesn’t have much of an education or a personable attitude. He’s quiet, he minds his own business, and he’ll do just fine somewhere on the bottom rungs of the business. While earning his keep down in those rungs, he trades many glances with Alice, a coworker who shares his lowly status, who he’ll stumble upon again shortly in a packed movie theater, the seat near her the only available option. The trouble here, in an otherwise normal and expected and lovely and loving development, is that George has been instructed not to fraternize with anyone who works for the family business. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t, they give in to temptation and start seeing each other, not socially, but in private, after hours, behind closed doors and shadows and humming radios.
As George starts creating a life for himself on the bottom rung, his uncle continues to invite him up the ladder, intending to give him the opportunity to reach the top. Up at the top, above the clouds, George finds Angela, a similarly golden-ticket-named socialite, with whom he falls into a different, more powerful kind of love. She lingers in his mind, and her last name flashes outside his apartment window – literally. Unfortunately for him, for them, she introduces herself, invites him to more events, and has the opportunity to share that she loves him, too.
Amid the pull between one lover and the other, matters are solidified into dread when Alice, and George, and us, find out that Alice is pregnant with George’s child.
Torn between the simple life he was heading towards, and the wonderful life he’s always dreamed for himself, George becomes desperate to escape this mess he’s in, and to follow his ambitions, to manifest his destiny.
As the film continues from there, the protagonist and the viewer are subjected to endless moral quandaries and questions of right and wrong, earned and unearned repercussions, and darknesses and fates. I won’t describe the last third of the film, which hangs on an important decision that George must make for himself, and one that is made for him. I hope, someday, that you decide to see for yourself.
Deciding to watch this movie for the first time, a decision that I have toyed with dozens of times, was a decision weighted down by the weight that I invented for it. Much like established canonical classics like Casablanca (1942) or 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), the burden that something so “important” has on it can be daunting. It is hard to remember and to realize that, in a certain way, the importance is invention, something created and intentionally decided upon by mostly small groups of people many moons ago, and that the weight behind canons and “important” art is limited, and not as scary and necessary as one might think. I find historical value in these accepted ideas, however, and I want to respect the perspectives of those who came before me that decided that these things were necessary, and titanic, and great. Luckily, as with Casablanca and 2001, I have found that many of these goliaths are, on their own merit, truly wonderful and fulfilling and worthy of their labels.
I first added it to my watchlist list when I read about Montgomery Clift, who plays George, and who was a part of the Actors Studio, which trained performers in what is commonly referred to as “The Method”/“Method Acting”. In the same year as A Place in the Sun, fellow Studio student Marlon Brando would create the biggest acting earthquake in Elia Kazan’s A Streetcar Named Desire. Joining Clift in the film are Shelley Winters, one of our country’s finest movie and stage performers who was also heavily trained in modern acting styles, who wanted to abandon her limiting, “blonde bombshell” roles to play darker, sadder, more interesting roles like Alice; also starring is a 19-year-old Elizabeth Taylor, one of the most legendary actors, and Americans, who has ever lived. Mike Nichols, who saw the movie as a young teenager, would cast Taylor and her husband Richard Burton in his first movie, fifteen years later: Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf (1966).
The trio of performers are stunning, each finding their own way into these lives of hope, love, and eventual devastation. Clift, playing a man stuck between two options, is successfully introverted, tortured, indecisive, and love-struck; his sometimes wordless performance was a revelation for the time, when louder, more articulate performances were the popular form. He is also rocking the Actors Studio uniform, a white tee shirt and jeans, an intentionally stripped down look that men in the Studio liked to wear to help showcase their down-to-earth and human approach to performance. Winters, who’s secret romance is reflected in the filmmaking by being frequently covered in shadow and skulking around at night, gets her wish of leaving behind the sexy, winning characters, and devastates with a performance of abandonment, longing, hopelessness, and determination. Taylor, who needs to walk on to the screen and steal our hearts, does so. She can’t be snotty and overly sophisticated, cut off from the lowly George, but rather inviting and warm and believably in love. I believe her.
Director George Stevens, who’s early success was tied with Taylor’s, crafted a connected production that uses character blocking, camera movement, varied camera lenses and depths, and other craftspeople to weave together a whole cloth. The work is elevated by all involved, particularly the costume designer Edith Head, the cinematographer William Mellor, and editor William Hornbeck. The movie is full of character, full of sharp and contrasted photography, and, while sometimes a bit slow, a heartbreaking unraveling of a story. One of my favorite pieces of direction in the film is the portrayal of the two different couples: one shrouded in darkness, kept at a physical distance, and another dancing across a ballroom, skirting away from attention, and filmed in a cramped close-up, smashing us in between the two embracing enchanted characters.
There are things, however, that I bumped on along the way, mostly old-timey ideas and systems and norms. If this story was made today, exactly the same, word for word, I believe it would be an abject failure. We’ve simply moved past certain ideas, and matured in many others. But this movie wasn’t made today, it was made over 72 years ago. The ability to watch this with an empathetic lens, to put yourself in the shoes of a 1951 viewer, is vital to finding the real zest this has to offer. In some respects, the movie barely shows signs of aging. In one scene, after discovering and revealing her pregnancy, Alice seeks out a doctor who she asks for help, unable to name the help she needs (thanks to the unyielding censorship programs that wouldn’t let words like “abortion” be used in mass media). The scene is deeply sad, sickening, and painfully modern.
With the context I’ve gained reading through Foster Hirsch’s Hollywood and the Movies of the Fifties, that of a flourishing but very uptight country after the war, this story felt like a conscious shift toward a story for the next generation, the coming baby boomers, for young adults: the development of the relationships between characters, the naivety of each of them, the moment-to-moment drama of falling in love, all anchored by these wonderful performances, felt real and true and honest in a surprising way. The timeless American tale of making it on your own, for reaching for the stars, for working hard, for starting a family, for fitting in; it’s all explored within. To its benefit, all of those ideas lead to harsher heartbreak when things start to crumble, especially when “The End” abruptly splashes onto the screen.
Ultimately, this is a “what do you think?” movie. It wants you to leave the theater with a “yes” or a “no”, or better yet desperate to know the truth. “Did he do it” or “do you believe him” or “do you forgive him”? It is unrelenting in this structure, and felt at times heavy handed, but it makes a real impact, and its storied impact remains perfectly observable. It’s worth noting that the source material, the novel, was based on a real incident in 1906, and the movie ends the same way the real life scenario did, broadly. This could have softened the blow, theoretically, for viewers of the time, or for readers of the book, but the levels of melodrama reached by the filmmakers here elevates the material beyond an A-to-B-to-C adaptation of a real life event. We are subject to real ideas through great performances and manipulative filmmaking, all coming together in a pivotal era of the country.
I’m thinking about A Place in the Sun on two levels as it continues to brew and stew in my brain: as a piece of Americana, of history, of inspiration, of change, of craft; and just as a movie, telling its story, trying to share its message. It is hard to hold both of those ideas separately, and I’m likely unable to truthly do so, but when I try, I find satisfaction and fulfillment from both perspectives. It worked on me, as a viewer, and worked to contextualize my expanding understanding of an industry and an artform, and some of the masters working within them.
And now it will enter my canon, forever jumping up and sliding down the internal lists in my head, with so many other wonderful works of art and Liz Lemon jokes.
So, now I know what I think. What about you?
Thank you, as always, for reading. Checking something like this off of my broader watchlist, and watching something good, and consuming something created so long ago, was deeply satisfying. I hope you carve out some time, soon, to watch or read or listen to or look at something you’ve been meaning to for a long time. Life is short, don’t leave the good things on the list.
TTFN,
Bobby