When I threw the dart to find my next cinematographic adventure and it landed on A Place in the Sun (1951) I thought maybe some kind of summer movie. Like any tourist with a bit of common sense, I went to do a little bit of research about my destination before embarking. It all went downhill from that moment.
This is a summer movie in the same way Die Hard (1980) is a Christmas movie. Summer and Christmas are there, but they have next to nothing to do with the core of the movies. Nevertheless, since the core of Old Academy Anew is to review old Hollywood movies through the lenses of today’s society, let’s get our resigned selves on that rickety black and white boat and get to the middle of the emotional Loon(ey) Lake.
THE OLD ANEW (YEP) PUN INTENDED
This film produced by George Stevens is based on both the 1925 novel An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser and the subsequent 1926 play with the same title. There’s also a 1931 film adaptation using the novel’s title. Then what in the seven hells of tin roofs possessed Paramount Pictures to entitle it A Place in the Sun when that phrase is not even mentioned in the film? Why not call it, Murder in Loon Lake or Moody Sensitive Preacher’s Son?
Let’s not forget the novel is the fictional account of the real murder of Grace Brown by Chester Gillette in 1906. Never mind she was actually killed in Big Moose Lake, New York. Which is an awful name for a murder place in a fictional account. So there’s that, I guess. When you learn the movie you’re about to watch stars Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, and Shelley Winters, you rub your hands together because you know those names and it has to be epic. These are mythical stars, right?
Nope. A Place In The Sun is slow as feck, and both editing and music are all over the effing place.
I mean, Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift are pretty to look at, but that can’t carry a movie. Well, technically in this age of frivolity it might. I’m talking this ridiculous fake-life, filtered-selfie, sponsored content moment in time. But, not even that could keep me completely focused on the exhausted-snail pace/narrative.
Okay. I’m shallow. I like pretty people. Still, this was a commitment because the other option was Quo Vadis (1951). Between the somewhat large knowledge, I have about Ancient Rome (for a novel *wink) and the whole poor martyred Xtians I saw on the trailer (we already have enough of that in 2021, thank you very much).
I couldn’t consciously put my reviewing canoe for almost three hours in the frigging Tiber. Nope.
A Place In The Sun begins with George Eastman (Montgomery Cliff) hitchhiking his way on an unknown highway. That thing of old movies when they put everything on the screen (like today’s end credits in reverse) in a stupidly giant font plus the score going from happy to nefarious with a vengeance is your first clue that this is going to be a messy ride.
Our boy George (heh heh) hails from Kansas City, MO via Chicago, IL where he met his father’s brother (the successful owner of a women’s swimsuit empire) while bell-hopping in some ritzy hotel. Now, the movie never tells you the swimsuit factory is in New York. But for everything that happens along the way we are to assume it’s at least within driving distance from there. In the opening scenes, the movie is ridiculously implying that George hitch-fukken-hiked 790 miles! If the point of that scene is to show selfish drivers not giving him a ride or an “IT’S AN EASTMAN” billboard showcasing one of uncle Eastman’s swimsuit-clad curvy models, those were 5 minutes wasted. (if you blink you might miss one of those awful people being Elizabeth Taylor speeding by in her pretty convertible)
Finally, a Good Samaritan in a chicken truck, whimsically missing the passenger door, rescues George in that final leg of his journey to a better life.
I have seen enough shows set around that time to know there were buses if not trains taking people long distances. Perversely, I went on a web search, but that opened a different can of worms about segregation and other shameful parts of history.
Fresh from the chicken truck ride, George goes to the front gate and asks to see Charles Eastman. The security guard rudely tells him he wishes to see the boss man too, but that would take at least another five years if he’s lucky. Because you know, lowly employees never interact with the big shots. Then sweet George produces a business card from Uncle Big Boss himself instructing to show it to the man at the gate. Yeah, that’s you, uppity underling. Ha! Our hero (for now) is promptly directed to the main office.
Sadly, Uncle Big Bucks is not in for the day. However, the name Eastman carries much weight even if you look and smell like the proletariat. Thus, the shrewd matron secretary calls him home.
The call is transferred to Papa’s Money Brother office, so the conversation is private, and George is quickly invited for a visit to the Eastman Mansion that night. The scene ends with George looking at a check with a lot of zeros (even for today’s standards) awaiting the sacred Eastman chicken scratch.
Snob Mrs. Eastman is wondering what they are going to do with George Eastman socially when the humble nephew arrives at the seat of the swimsuit empire. Uncle Charles (did I run out of snarky monikers?) introduces him to the family which includes son Earl and daughter Marcia. Mrs. Eastman asks about his mother, remembering she wrote them a moving letter when Asa (George’s father and Charles’s brother) died. During this interaction, we learn about the other branch of the Eastmans and their religious work. “Oh, like the Salvation Army?” asks cousin Marcia. “No. Not like the Salvation Army,” answers an openly embarrassed George.
This is one of the few interesting moments of the movie for me. We have two brothers (no other siblings are mentioned) who lived basically at opposite ends of the “moral” spectrum.
One some sort of street preacher, the other a purveyor of indecency in the form of women exposing themselves via resort wear. As a person who creates characters for a living, I always know the meaning of the names I give my creations because names have power. The preacher’s name, Asa, means healer in Hebrew, while Charles comes from the old English word ceorl meaning free man. Have to give points to the writers for that subversive subtext. And, in case you’re wondering, George comes from an ancient Greek word for farmer or earth-worker…
Enters Angela Vickers (a not even yet 20-years-old Elizabeth Taylor), with some football-player-type dude in tow to whisk the Eastman siblings to a social event. Mind you, the old Eastmans are also going out, so they made poor George come all the way from whatever the heck he’d found to stay for a 10 minutes visit and 35.00 dollars spent in a proper suit for the occasion— probably cab fare too!
Assholes the lot of them. Still, the uncle tells him to go to the factory the next day to start working; George doesn’t have much education, but he’s gonna put him somewhere. Half an asshole then.
The first time we’re at the factory proper is to a bunch of old men in a board meeting with one saying something along the lines of “France might decide their women’s fashion, but they’re not going to tell American women what to wear!” With not a single woman in sight to have an opinion about American fashion or any other thing really… If you thought the rich people were impervious to the proletariat wait till you see how they handle women in general…
A VILLAIN’S ORIGIN STORY
It’s logical to wonder why this section is called A Villain’s Origin Story. If you’re thinking Maleficent (2005) or Cruella (2020), you are wrong because this is basically Joker (2019) light.
Light as in only one calorie, I mean, one death. Shall we?
Cousin Earl is the one in charge to find a position for George. After seeing George’s lingering glance on one of the swimsuit models (because obviously, they have to show some women scantily clad), Earl tells him that there’s a strict rule of no fraternizing with the female employees. George being an Eastman, that rule applies to him with more emphasis (the cousin’s words not mine). Dark-haired, hunky George (in his undershirt with rolled sleeves) ends up in a very movie-prop packaging assembly line to the cat-calling welcome of those objects of desire he’s not supposed to fraternize with.
Times passes as it does in movies— images of months rip from a calendar mixed with George toiling with neatly stacked boxes and the ever-changing posters of swimsuit models with their mocking smiles taunting him from the walls of that boisterously female working space. Ah, but all these months later, George’s still wearing that roughish ensemble made famous by James Dean in Rebel Without a Cause (1955) instead of the overalls the other male workers sport. I call shenanigans— visually cute, narratively illogical.
I can totally hear the late Joan Rivers asking, “Who wore it better, Montgomery or James?” on an episode of E!’s Fashion Police. And I could not choose…
One weekend, George goes to the movies and, after finding his seat, notices a female co-worker of the assembly line (Shelley Winters) with whom he’s exchanged knowing glances now and then one empty seat away. She’s beside a cute guy in a sailor (?) uniform, and we all think she’s with him. Coquettishly, she says, “Small world.” Uniform dude retorts, “You have no idea,” and turns to look at his actual date with an eye roll. George jumps to sit with her. By the time the movie ends, the few couples left around are totally eating face, but not them. He offers to walk her home.
On the way, they encounter a group of people singing hymns on the street. George’s gaze focuses on the preteen boy, obviously a reflection of him doing the same at that age. Any movie of this century would have gone on an obscenely unnecessary five-minute (or more) flashback.
Thankfully, that doesn’t happen but the conservative creepiness is not far. Beware.
The duo finally arrives at Elm Avenue where the girl lives in number 4433½ with “her own private entrance.” Notice I said the girl because up to this moment her name has not been mentioned; neither for up to half of the movie until George exclaims “Gee, Al.” He never calls her anything but Al about all of five times before she’s murdered. I know her name is Alice because the effing close captioning is telling me so; the movie doesn’t give a flying toilet about her— she’s just a vehicle to create a villain. And in such a literal manner that from the first moment George puts his arm around her shoulders, his hold was so unbelievably invasive, I, a gay man used to having big burly arms around me, felt uncomfortable.
Not to mention the way he kissed her; it felt like someone was about to be fingered in public without their consent. Yikes.
I’m going to spare you the sordid details of their encounters, and I use the word “sordid” because that’s how they felt to me even if they were perfectly innocuous in plain sight. Suffice it to say that the night they engage in the deed that ultimately sealed her fate, it starts to rain and they run for that private entrance George has never crossed before. She has a radio by her window and they turn it on to hear a little something while he waits for the rain to stop. The volume goes haywire and he enters her room to fix it, asking her to join him inside for a dance. The radio is playing something I’m going to call a mambo as they embrace.
The scene fades to black, forever tarnishing every good memory I have of Ricky Ricardo’s Band in I Love Lucy because I know where those hips moves are heading.
Interestingly, the next day after that first crossing of the entrance into her room and her body, Uncle Big Bucks discovers that George is still at the assembly line way too many months later. Immediately he orders the foreman to give him a higher position, incidentally inviting the nephew to a party at Bikini Mansion on some date I can’t recall right now but which happens to coincide with George’s birthday.
A fact we learn through a totally despondent Al, seeing him move away from her working and emotional proximity— barely hours after unveiling that last mystery she should have kept to herself.
They continue seeing each other. The night of the party arrives. George promises Al he’s just going to swing by to talk shop with Uncle Swimsuit Smut for a minute— he has no business being around those fancy people; besides, he knows Al is preparing a nice spread (total pun intended) for his special day. She reluctantly agrees, as if she has some say on it, which we all know she doesn’t, not even a little.
As expected, those fancy people ignore George. He finds a pool table ways from the party and starts playing. He’s doing a cool trick, holding the cue from behind his back when socialite and secret crush Angela Vickers happens to walk by the half-opened door to the room. She does a double-take, in the way of someone aware that nice boys don’t know how to do those tricks, and enters the room. This not even 20 yet Elizabeth Taylor is delicious, not just in her beauty but in the way she inserts herself into the scene. “Why all alone?” She trails the edge of the pool table with a finger as she saunters around it.
“Being exclusive? Being dramatic?” She pauses and pins him down with those unique eyes. “Being blue?”. Fuck.
George answers, “I’m just fooling around. Maybe you’d like to play?” His voice cracks, but his choice of words makes me feel clammy, dirty.
“Oh, no. I’ll just watch you. Go ahead,” she offers in her rich almost-Southern-but-not-quite, husky drawl from now lowered lashes.
He can’t concentrate on playing with her behind him. She wonders, “You look like an Eastman. Are you one of them?
“I’m a nephew. My name is George.”
“I’m Angela,” she offers casually.
“Vickers,” George blurts, She stares at him inquiringly. “I saw you here last spring,” he adds shyly.
Angela narrows her eyes, studying him. She concludes her appraisal with a dreamy “You look unusual.”
Oh, she likes them, troubled blue boys…
The stark contrast between the shiny onyx-haired object of desire socialite and the blond drab farm girl, who doesn’t wear a bikini because she’s so afraid of the water she never learned how to swim, is so great it broke my dark jaded heart.
Uncle France-Can-Suck-It finds them in a very uneven verbal spar and for no particular reason, his interaction in the scene ends with him grabbing the phone requesting a long-distance call and ordering George to talk to his mother at the Bethel Independent Mission in Kansas City, Missouri. I honestly cannot recall if the name of this Mrs. Eastman (a magnificent and rumored Communist Anne Revere) is mentioned, but the first thing that came to mind upon seeing her was Mary Lou Barebone from Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (2016) with that phony piousness that reeks of fire and brimstone instead of nurturing and redemption. The first words out of her mouth are, “George? God bless you, my son. Are you sick?”
The WTF that bursts from my mouth is such an explosion my cat jumps from my lap with a screech.
Man, nothing to douse any ardor quicker than your sanctimonious “Mama” telling you to be a good boy when your crush is beside you nosily listening to the conversation. A conversation that was no longer than two minutes but horrible enough to let me know why George had to run for a sinner city like Chicago.
Notice the “HOW LONG SINCE YOU’VE WRITTEN TO YOUR MOTHER” in the picture. Guilt is her coin. Shame shame shame. I’m totally doing the Game of Thrones thing with the big ass bell in my head.
Nevertheless, Angela Vickers is the sun chasing away all dark conservative gloom and doom, and what follows is a pristine moment worthy of any Disney Princess live-action remake with dance and laughter and adoring glances.
Alas, the sun must set, and George must attend his real birthday party even if he’s three hours late. He finds Al asleep, open-mouthed, and probably drooling. She’s not happy he stayed so long at that soirée (my word not hers) surrounded by pretty girls. She offers him melted ice cream and mushy cake along with a beautiful fountain pen. And because she’s insecure and dramatic and created by the Lord only to complicate George Eastman’s life, she chooses that night, of all nights— the night he has finally connected with the woman of his dreams to reveal in the most pitifully pathetic way that she is preggers.
There will be no more sweet (creepy) kisses at 4433½ Elm Avenue.
HOW NOT TO GET AWAY WITH MURDER
“Man, this movie slow,” yawns my brain 40 minutes into this 122 minutes movie. Take into consideration that I am not a minute man. I have a fairly nice capacity for patience. I come from the age of modems for crying out loud when you had to wait like 30 minutes to download grainy porn. It’s not an error, I mean grainy as in blurry, not granny. Behave.
I adore Elizabeth Taylor, but not even her magical performance convinces me that she’s in love with Blue Boy Eastman. Of course, if you go by the Disney Love formula, sure after one night of dancing they are supposed to be heading for the altar, but as with all Disney stories there must be a villain— and that villains ought to be slain.
Oh, you thought George was the villain? No. No. Remember we’re receiving this from George’s POV so the villain is the fukken preggers witch preventing his happily ever after.
I mean kudos to Al for a five-second burst of cojones and showing up with her shabby valise, demanding marriage and threatening George with “phoning” the papers to tell them all and then kill herself. Of course, those five seconds of cojones is what put her in the middle of Lake Cuckoo, sorry Loon, but hey at least she tried. She tried so desperately hard, she didn’t even realize that the next business day, the Monday when she wanted to force George to marry her is Labor Day. The effing courthouse in Warsaw, Wherever, NY was motherpregging closed!
What ensues next is the most accurate tale of every single thing you’re not supposed to do if you want to get rid of someone and come out unscathed. The word “pendejo” comes to mind to describe George at this point, but I seriously think it is a disservice to all the honest pendejos in the world.
Maybe it all seemed plausible in the 1950s, and even long before that because well this is based on a real crime that happen at the beginning of the twentieth century, but today? No dice.
Up to this point, the movie has tried to sell George as some smart bad boy, who only acts meekly around his betters to further his agenda. After all, he lived in Chicago and knows how to do cool pool tricks… Dude has no frigging clue. Suspension of disbelief is not even a concept you can try to insert in this fiasco. Not going to bother with details because just remembering them I’m getting annoyed.
Next.
(PRO) CHOICE AND THE RIGHT TO HAPPINESS
Alice Tripp didn’t have to die and wouldn’t have died if she’d been allowed to have an abortion. Tripp, more than George Eastman’s victim, was a victim of that 1950s chauvinistic/conservative but morally corrupted society still bleeding and permeating today’s humanity.
A male doctor, inferred to have helped others with abortions, unilaterally decided she didn’t deserve that option. I’m ready to bet money it was because she simply looked like she couldn’t afford the fee. The petulant asshole looked like the kind filth unable to do anything out of kindness.
Even in her death, that farmer girl from the assembly line was just another man’s tool.
The District Attorney (Raymond Burr of Perry Mason fame) made a spectacle of her murder even before the trial, traipsing with his limp and his cane through the forest in search of a murder suspect. I mean, that legal jurisdictional area couldn’t be such a small backwater piece of law enforcement expanse that the district attorney had to do leg (wink) work. And we know it’s not that because, besides one sensationalist headline about the trial, there’s an insert speaking of said DA on his road to Capitol. Assholes the lot of them, I say!
Now, keep in mind we are reviewing this seventy-year-old movie. Not only with the eyes of today’s society but also with its knowledge. How epically sad both Montgomery Clift and Raymond Burr, who stood at opposite ends of that trial as defendant and prosecutor were two men who couldn’t live their truths. The truth about who they were and who they loved. Montgomery Clift died basically alone (with only his male nurse as a companion) at 45 of a heart attack. At least, Raymond Burr was lucky enough to have a male partner for more than thirty years (he died at 76) but never in the open.
Beyond the glorification of villains, that those of you under 25 reading this thought was a new thing. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to watch this movie and go “Wow, thank fook we ain’t like that no more.”
Sadly, we can’t. We are living in a society hell-bent on going backward or/and tripping itself to erase history. Stupidly dooming future generations to repeat the same mistakes. But hey, as they say in Spanish “No hay mal que dure cien años, ni cuerpo que lo resista.” Tricky to translate but it goes something like this “No ailment lasts one hundred years nor a body can hold for that long.” Hopefully, we only have like twenty-something more years to deal with this frustrating nonsense.
Did I like A Place In The Sun? Hmm. I cannot say I hated it. I was not happy with the fact that the main female characters had such very similar names. Good writers don’t do that shite then go and try to fix it by practically going out of their way to avoid saying one of the names.
That’s called stubbornness in any decade.
Nevertheless, the only moment that truly resonated with me was near the very end when a now-convicted George awaits the electric chair. Angela, who has been at school for most of the trial (yeah she was still in school somehow), comes to see him all deck in black as if she were already a widow. George confesses to be guilty of many things beyond murder. She doesn’t care. She vows, “I’ll go on loving you for as long as I live.”
George grasps her dainty hands and stares into her eyes. “Love me for the time I have left then forget me.”
Dang.
That, my friends, is a truly unselfish act.
The one thing we might call redemption.
I’m giving A Place In The Sun 4 out of 10. I’m pretty sure this is a movie NO ONE is going to remake.
Cheers.
A Place In The Sun is currently streaming on PlutoTV