A Place in the Sun
1951, directed by George Stevens
Toward the end of A Place in the Sun, right after the courtroom scene, George Eastman writes to his mother. The note is unusually brief: “Mother I am convicted.” It makes its point with an economy of words, but we might ask why it’s needed at all. The news is redundant after the verdict, and no one would question his mother’s unannounced appearance in his cell. Also slightly strange is the word “convicted” – not because it’s improper, but because, especially in the context of George’s upbringing, it has a double meaning. To be convicted also means to be fully subsumed into a religious faith. George’s mother might have taken his letter as good news, and the remaining scenes have an air of religious salvation as George admits a share of guilt, accompanied by his mother and Reverend Morrison.
Religion, however, does not get the last word here. As George walks to his execution, the film ends with a dissolve to George’s memory of kissing Angela Vickers. The film is adapted from Theodore Dreiser’s novel An American Tragedy, and it doesn’t alter the story enough to diminish the tragic force of the ending. A tale of salvation should have some sense of joy, but that’s not to be found here, and certainly not in George’s prim mother. The dual meaning of “convicted” reflects the opposite forces tearing at George, as if his salvation and his damnation were equivalent, as if he were born to be convicted in one sense or the other.
George Eastman’s trial takes place in the courthouse of a fictional Warsaw County, changed from Cataraqui County in the novel. Although it’s common to find localities in the United States named after European places, still the name of Warsaw must have carried a lot of baggage in a film made only six years after World War II. Warsaw was the capital of a country torn between opposing sides, at both the beginning and the end of the war, and ultimately crushed like George Eastman is. Unless the viewer is disposed, like the district attorney and many other characters, to stand apart from George, judging him through a lens of morality, the story is of a man torn and crushed by forces stronger than himself. A film like this wages an uphill battle in a moralistic society, but A Place in the Sun does all it can to keep us from standing apart from its protagonist.
In the opening scene George is on the edge of a highway, hitching the last leg of his journey to his rich uncle’s clothing factory. Immediately he’s thrown into a world of contrasts. First he marvels at his own surname on a billboard for an Eastman swimsuit, then Angela Vickers speeds by in a Cadillac convertible. He stares after her, while a rickety old truck stops to pick him up. The contrast is not only between wealth and poverty, but between his own future and his past. He’s evidently comfortable with the truck driver, as he comes from that world. In his uncle’s office he’ll be uncomfortable until he’s left alone in the big armchair behind the executive desk. He’ll continue alternating between comfort and discomfort, not only among his leisure class relatives but also in the working class world of rooming houses, cheap cinemas and diners, the factory floor, and his coworker Alice Tripp.
The swimsuits manufactured at the Eastman factory, which George and Alice box up on an assembly line, are an ironic omen of things to come – both his happy times with Angela at Loon Lake and the fatal boat ride with Alice, who tells him early on that she can’t swim. On the billboard, however, the swimsuit also points to the idea of fitting, which proves to be a constant issue for George. He’s able to function well in both worlds, but he never quite fits in. Alice always feels an edge of suspicion toward him, just as he never fully overcomes the social distance separating him from his relatives and Angela’s parents. With Angela, however, he absolutely fits, and as they dance together the film takes great care to show how well their profiles fit together.
As strange as it must have been for George to see his surname over a smiling young woman in a swimsuit, it’s also strange that his lodgings are haunted by the flashing lights of Angela’s surname outside the window. The film is filled with such signs of destiny. A print of John Everett Millais’ drowning Ophelia hangs in George’s bedroom. When George and Alice find the marriage registry closed on Labor Day, the open doorway to his eventual courtroom looms behind them, held onscreen for forty seconds through a long dissolve to Loon Lake. When they row through the channel into Angela’s “own” lake, Alice shivers as if crossing an ill-fated line.
From the Cadillac and truck in the opening scene onward, George Eastman’s future and past impinge on his present. His upbringing weighs heavily on him every time he enters the social circle of his wealthy relatives, and when he walks Alice home he encounters a family of proselytizing street singers, exchanging looks with the boy as if coming face to face with his past self. In prison at the end, he’s left in the company of his mother and the minister, as if his past has finally clawed him back to its bosom. It’s normal for a movie character to carry signs of a past and a future, but George’s memories and forebodings are so pronounced that they weaken his present self. Again and again the film places George at the mercy of external forces. Imposing sound effects punctuate the film, constant reminders of a world beyond George’s control, which more often than not controls him: a factory whistle, dogs barking, birds chirping, police sirens, church bells, Angela’s car horn, the cry of a loon.
George may be weak, subjected to powerful winds of fate, but he’s not exactly passive. He shows initiative at work, he declares his love to Angela, and at the fateful moment on the lake he resists all the forces tempting him to harm Alice. There’s a fundamental decency in him, but circumstances conspire against him, and the film defines those circumstances precisely. Neither the socio-economic inequality of his two worlds, nor the moralistic judgments of religion and courtroom, are sufficient to crush him; rather it’s the polarized contrasts of both those forces working together. The insight here is that inequality and moralism go hand in hand. They both stem from a worldview that divides reality into artificial oppositions, ripping asunder anyone who blurs its categories.
Alice and Angela represent the two worlds tearing at George Eastman, and they would appear to be opposites, but the film draws an extraordinary parallel between them, of which the initial letter of their names is only the beginning. Each of them appears in a boat, dancing with George, riding with him in a convertible, being stopped by a policeman, and eavesdropping on a conversation with Charles Eastman. Angela offers a penny for George’s thoughts, and Alice wants to know what he wished for on the first star. George meets Angela at a billiards table, and on his first date with Alice they walk by a pool hall. Alice has a small radio on her windowsill, and there’s a small radio on the dock as Angela and her friends speed away on the lake. Alice complains that the ice cream she bought for George has melted, and Angela tells him her parents are beginning to “melt”. Alice’s newspaper dissolves into an image of flames, and Angela’s mother tosses a newspaper into the fire to shield her daughter from news of the trial.
Besides the parallels linking these two women, other parallels serve both to link and to highlight the extremes of the world George has entered. When the majesty of his relatives’ lifestyle first impresses itself on him, he finds a check to the IRS for $100,000. The same figure comes up again when things come crashing down, and his uncle vows to spend that much to defend him if he’s innocent – but if he’s guilty he “won’t spend a cent to save him from the electric chair.” There’s an elaborate birdcage in the Eastman mansion, and a humble birdcage in the prison corridor. George shops for a tweed suit, then a cut takes us to his cousin Earl dressing in a fancy black suit. Angela throws a stone flirtatiously at George’s boarding house window, and an angry mob throws stones through the window of George’s cell. During George’s vacation with Angela’s family, a cutaway to Alice is bracketed by two dissolves, from the water of Loon Lake to the fire of a luau-themed dinner party – the water and fire marking the extremes of Alice’s moods through the cutaway, from drowning in self-pity to the fire of jealousy.
Charlie Chaplin was a great admirer of A Place in the Sun, calling it “the greatest movie ever made about America”. He must have noticed how similar its last half was to his own Monsieur Verdoux (1947), from the anticipated killing of a woman on a rowboat, to the trial, the priest or minister, and the final march. Both films are sympathetic to their protagonists despite their wrongs, but the comic tone of Chaplin’s film is a world apart from the tragic tone of Stevens’ film. That difference however is easily reconciled by Chaplin’s famous observation that life itself is tragic in close-up and comical when viewed from a distance. Still there’s another reason for the difference, which is summed up in Chaplin’s words “about America” and in Dreiser’s title An American Tragedy. Monsieur Verdoux is set in France… its comic distance would be out of place in the United States, where the oppositional thinking of religious morality and of ruggedly individualistic capitalism is too extreme.
CONNECTIONS:
Sunrise – Man rows a woman out on a lake with intention to drown her
Monsieur Verdoux – Man rows a woman out on a lake with intention to drown her; film ends with a courtroom trial, a priest or minister in a jail cell, and a march to execution
Such a Pretty Little Beach – A man encounters a boy living in the exact situation of his own childhood
A Letter to Three Wives – Economic commentary and precise portraiture of social classes in a fictional setting resembling upstate New York
Pickpocket – Tale of crime and love with its final scene in a prison; sound effects reify the notion of an external world beyond the protagonist’s inner experience
Plein soleil – Fatal boating trip; external world as a projection of destiny; handsome and talented protagonist denied entry into the upper class
Alphaville – Indictment of a culture that divides the world into opposites
The Moon in the Gutter – Love triangle composed of a working class man and two women of opposite economic class
Dogville – Indictment of the United States as a particularly judgmental society
Parasite – Insight that moralism and economic inequality are tandem forces of polarization