Love's Labors Water-Logged

 

George Eastman's Glimpse of Heaven ...

Among the One-Hundred: A Place in the Sun

... Then Back He Goes to Grip of Hell

Opening of A Place in the Sun is its own mini-masterpiece. American tragedy happens here before a first word is spoken. George/Monty hears, but just glimpses, a convertible streaking by and sounding its distinctive horn. He won’t know, and we might not register even later, that it’s Angela/Liz. I so lament fact she did not stop and pick George up. Imagine if she had and found out enroute that he’s an Eastman, plus being Monty and thus irresistible. “You’ll be my pick-up” she’ll later say to George (his fate by then sealed), but why oh why could she not pick him up now? Well, because there’d be no movie, pain of what's to come more acute because we saw Angela w/o knowing and glorious opportunity sped by before narrative even began. What an artist George Stevens was. I credit him almost whole because word is (via Marilyn Ann Moss’ fine bio) that Stevens bent writers’ will to his own, and early on, for all projects he would direct. Montgomery Clift as George is for me the defining postwar male performance in movies, that is among males who were newcomers. It’s clear under opening credits: a new sort of leading man had arrived. Yes, Clift had been around in a western and in uniform for a Euro-set military drama, but this was him bursting upon a modern and distinctly American scene. Brando in that same year? Not so big a deal, no comparison by me. Besides, Monty predated him for Place production having commenced 10-4-49. That’s almost two years before it premiered at the Fine Arts Theatre in Los Angeles (8-14-51). George Stevens spent seeming eons editing his postwar features, routinely exposed over a hundred thousand feet of film (were there landfills large enough to contain all of scraps?). He surely went daffy during such ordeals. I’ve loved A Place in the Sun since NBC sprang it upon primetime viewership on March 12, 1966. Greenbriar told of hot-contested first network run on June 2, 2008, then visited A Place in the Sun again June 12, 2019 (“George Stevens Goes to the Movies”). I’ll try here not to repeat what was writ before, this if ever a film one could wax endlessly upon.

Each Time Watching, We Wish Monty Would Say Something To Sway the Jury His Way

Was having just turned twelve for me a factor? Certainly. I knew what the dissolve off that windowsill radio meant. More meaningful was Stevens crediting me with sense enough to get his gesture. I was here sledding upon grown-up ice and had Stevens to thank for the flattery. Did George Eastman let Alice drown, or could he really not help what happened? I’m still not 100% sold either way. George in his death cell comes closest to a confession, though mother Anne Revere and priest Paul Frees prod along his recognition of fault. I maintain he could not have saved Alice given the circumstance. Is that because Clift is so deeply sympathetic in his performance? Stevens abets by avoiding detail after the boat tips over. It’s all a long shot in darkness, and we are made to guess. The director assumes we want George and Angela to work out, though this time I noticed how manipulative Angela actually is. She’s spoiled and entitled and no man, including her father, would or could say no to her. She handles George like a child. Of course he will marry her once she makes up her mind to that, and no, he will not forego his vacation with her family at the lake. George for all his lost-little-boy charm is soft and weak and just made to be ordered about by not one, but two, girl bosses. Tell mama all, indeed. George is trapped, utterly doomed, from the moment Alice lets him in her humble digs. This was 1951 and nobody who expected to earn a living could go about siring a child out of wedlock. “We’re in awful trouble,” Alice says, and she’s right. Do people say A Place in the Sun is dated primarily for that? In 1966 when I first saw it, unwed parenthood was still very much a crisis when/where it happened. There was more than one girl in my high school class who “had” to get married, college too. Does any aspect of this unwritten law still abide? One could say walk away, George, just walk away, but to where? His Eastman name and family connections would not mean a thing after disgrace like this. I understood such reality at age twelve, but how would twelve-year-olds today react? Maybe this as much as anything keeps A Place in the Sun off Fathom Event booking sheets.

Biggest Mistake of George's Life Happens Here, and All Males Watching Knew It

Prospect of Marriage to Alice is Like Rehearsal of March to the Electric Chair for Hapless George

Now for the anchor to weigh heaviest upon A Place in the Sun: Shelley Winters as Alice Tripp. No … Shelley Winters is Alice Tripp, hers if anything too good a performance. Men blanch particularly at the sight and sound of Alice, because most men have had at least one Alice Tripp in their life, save those lucky enough to meet “Miss Right” early on and stay with her. Alice is Pure Passive Aggression and ultimate nightmare for all of a male species. Writers in abundance say George should have taken her out in the boat lots sooner. Shelley Winters herself took lumps for being Alice. Frank Sinatra couldn’t tolerate Winters on Meet Danny Wilson, done the year after A Place in the Sun was released. Had he been to see latter and formed Alice-animus? Marilyn Ann Moss wrote how Winters wanted to soften the character, but Stevens said no. He preferred Alice “dour” and an anchor, “maybe I loaded the dice” he admitted later. And how you loaded the dice, GS. For Stevens, Alice was “the kind of a girl a man could be all mixed up with in the dark and wonder how the hell he got into it in the daylight.” His was obviously a voice of experience, one that millions of men would and did identify with. Many would see A Place in the Sun once and swear never again, the sight of Shelley Winters from there full-on anathema. Having read how Alice was designed specifically so by Stevens makes the more effective his intent and execution. He wants us to know what George gave up by bedding down with Alice. Angela Vickers on a silver tray cannot rescue George from the mess he has made for himself. We sympathize with him and wish for some sort of rescue, but George is a lost soul. Total of third act is law’s net tightening about him. No scene passes without a newspaper headline, radio reportage of the investigation throbbing behind unrelated dialogue. That electric chair will seem like a soothing message after what George has gone through.

Accusing Fingers Point to George ... Was He Guilty? ... We Are Left to Decide

A 1959 Reissue Pairs Previous Paramount Hits

George can’t believe Angela could love him, even as he had no problem moving in on Alice and stealing her heart and virtue. This is Montgomery Clift after all, and no woman will bar his way. Difference here is class, rank, family, position. George had these but did not realize it. He was an Eastman and would have been absorbed into the family to which he was initially a stranger but would not have stayed so. He was a member and membership confers privilege. George’s uncle says he will pay whatever is needed to defend his nephew but only if George is innocent. George would have been a prize ornament for the family, especially married to a Vickers and thereby firming a business alliance, an arrangement not unlike David Larrabee pledged to Elizabeth Tyson, plastics meet sugar. Class is everything where it comes to profitable courtship. George had it made before he met Angela. For him to wonder how a goddess like her could love a guy like him … well of course she could. George was the best prospect she could have met. Did he know that and put on a humble act to disguise his cunning? Could be, and might be obvious, except for Montgomery Clift playing it so vulnerable. Let’s figure he’s awed after childhood and youth spent singing at his mother’s Mission, George ill-equipped to cope with a rich life among beautiful people. What guides viewer emotion is Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, definitions of early fifties physical perfection, our reading skewed for being entranced by both. Theirs were engines to drive A Place in the Sun, visual cues to certainty it would sell. George Stevens understood this and exploited every possibility his two stars presented. Place had a downer tale to tell and it needed you-are-there romance to make such meal edible. Swoon effect would not be overcome by courtrooms, conviction, and Monty march to oblivion. Overlay of him and Angela kissing makes his last mile manageable, at least for viewers who might come back a second time (but not their dates … thanks for nothing, Alice).