A Place in the Sun

The source is Theodore Dreiser's An American Tragedy, which itself came out of a real case, the Chester Gillette murder of 1906. George Eastman is a poor young man. He gets a job at his wealthy relatives' factory and begins a secret relationship with Alice, who works there. Then he meets Angela from the family's circle and a completely different life opens in front of him: money, acceptance, a change of class. When Alice becomes pregnant, both lives cannot be had at once. The film's power comes not from moral argument but from faces. George Stevens holds Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor in unusually tight close-ups; the scenes where two faces fill the screen sit outside the Hollywood grammar of the time. Shelley Winters plays Alice, and hers is the hardest part in it. Stevens won the Best Director Oscar for it. An important work for anyone who loves classical Hollywood melodrama and American stories built on class. Heavy going for anyone wanting pace; the film is about the mind that arrives at the crime rather than the crime.