--- title: "A Place in the Sun" year: 1951 kind: "film" canonical: "https://film.one/film/a-place-in-the-sun" fi1m_score: 81 critics_score: 82 critics_reviews: 8 published: "2026-09-20T02:17:24.807123+00:00" updated: "2026-09-20T02:17:25.212992+00:00" region: "US" licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL." --- # A Place in the Sun (1951) Directed by George Stevens · 2h 02m · MPA NR · Drama, Romance, Crime **Fi1m score: 81** · Critics 82 from 8 reviews *In a sentence:* The two most beautiful faces in Hollywood fall in love in close-up, and the plain girl waits by the phone > George Stevens’s version of Dreiser’s *An American Tragedy* is slow, handsome and harder than it looks. Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor are filmed as if the camera were in love with them, and the film asks us to be too, at Shelley Winters’s expense. ## Synopsis George Eastman (Montgomery Clift), the poor nephew of a rich manufacturer, hitchhikes into town to ask his uncle Charles Eastman (Herbert Heyes) for work. He is given a job on the packing line of the family swimsuit factory and a rule: the firm’s men do not go out with the firm’s girls. He goes out with one anyway. Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters) works beside him, and they find each other one night at the pictures, both alone. Her rented room becomes the nearest thing he has to a home. Then an invitation arrives from the big house, and Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor), the girl he saw drive past on his first day, notices him at a party. George wants her, and the life that comes with her. Alice wants him, and is waiting by the telephone. ## Review A young man walks along a highway with his thumb out. Behind him a billboard shows a girl in an Eastman swimsuit; in front of him an open car goes past, and the girl in it does not look round. That is the first minute of *A Place in the Sun*, and George Stevens has told you most of the story already. The young man is George Eastman (Montgomery Clift), come to ask his rich uncle for a job. It is adapted by Harry Brown and Michael Wilson from Theodore Dreiser’s novel *An American Tragedy*, brought forward to the present day. It has Stevens’s pace: 122 minutes in which nobody hurries and every shot is allowed to finish. We admire it, and we would send you to it with one warning: it is much kinder to two of its characters than to the third. The uncle, Charles Eastman (Herbert Heyes), receives George in the big house, then hands him to his son Earl (Keefe Brasselle), who puts him in the packing room and tells him the firm does not allow its men to go out with its girls. George goes out with one anyway. Alice Tripp (Shelley Winters) works on the line beside him, and they meet properly one night at the pictures. The scenes in her rented room are the film’s plainest and, for a while, its most affecting. William C. Mellor lights them with one lamp and the glow of a radio, and Winters plays a woman who cannot believe her luck and is right not to. Then George is invited up to the house, and the girl from the car, Angela Vickers (Elizabeth Taylor), sees him, and Stevens moves the camera in on the two of them until there is nothing on screen but their faces. Clift’s is turned half away. Taylor’s fills the rest of the frame while she talks in a rush about how she can tell he is unhappy. We forgot to breathe. It is not the dialogue, which is close to nonsense; it is the size of it, two faces so near the lens that you can see the light shift in Taylor’s eyes, and a man who has never been properly looked at realising that he is. Mellor shoots the whole film in black and white with real black in it: the factory floor grey, the lake white glare, the nights deep. William Hornbeck dissolves one image into the next so slowly that both sit on screen together, Angela’s face laid over a shot of Alice waiting, a lake laid over a bed. It is not subtle, but it makes the film feel like something remembered rather than something happening. Franz Waxman’s score swells whenever Taylor appears and goes thin and nervous around Winters. Edith Head puts Taylor in a white strapless gown and puts Winters in a coat. Now the warning. Alice is written to be got rid of. The screenplay gives her a plaintive voice on the telephone and a habit of turning up, and takes away nearly everything that might make us want her to stay. Winters plays exactly what is written; the trouble is what was written. Halfway through we caught ourselves wishing she would go away so George could get back to the lake, and did not much like ourselves for it. Whether Stevens wanted us to feel that or simply felt it himself, we cannot tell. The second half takes the story somewhere we will not describe. Raymond Burr arrives as District Attorney R. Frank Marlowe and gives a performance louder than anything around it, and the last forty minutes are steadier and more conventional than the first eighty. Anne Revere, as George’s mother Hannah, has a handful of scenes and makes them count without raising her voice. Clift had a way of looking as if he were listening to something in the next room, and Stevens uses it: George never quite belongs to any scene he is in. Watch it in the dark and let the dissolves do their work. And when the telephone rings in Alice’s room, notice who the film cuts to. *Fi1m score 81, published 20 September 2026.* ## What the critics say Most critics admire it, and the praise lands in the same place almost every time: the pairing of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor. Review after review names their chemistry as the film’s chief asset, the thing that makes its story of desire and ambition believable. George Stevens’ direction and his eye for detail draw steady credit, and the notices from 1951 and those written for its 2013 revival agree with each other to an unusual degree. The Times also singles out Edith Head’s costumes. The spread is narrow: seven positive reviews, one mixed and none negative. The dissent comes from Time Out, which finds the psychodrama overblown, the social satire dubious, the characters broadly drawn and Shelley Winters’s performance grotesque, while still conceding the leads. Empire allows that the film has failings but says the director’s conviction and the beauty of the stars carry it past them. Variety, by contrast, counts Winters among its strengths. ### Reviews we read (8) - **Sight and Sound**, Geoff Andrew (90/100, inferred): The critic finds the film strong, adult and honest in its handling of desire, class and tragedy, and far more effective than most Hollywood romances. He singles out the ravishing physical beauty and chemistry of Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor as the element that most powerfully conveys irresistible passion. [Read](https://www.bfi.org.uk/features/hollywoods-beautiful-people-place-sun) - **The Guardian**, Peter Bradshaw (90/100, inferred): This is a gripping noir masterpiece that merges suspense with romantic tragedy. The critic singles out the thrilling chemistry between Montgomery Clift and Elizabeth Taylor, along with George Stevens' masterly direction and eye for detail. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/film/2013/jan/31/a-place-in-the-sun-review) - **The New York Times**, Bosley Crowther (90/100, inferred): The critic calls the film a work of beauty, tenderness, power, and insight, crediting Stevens' expert direction and the cast for creating a distinguished work that ranks among Hollywood's finest in years. [Read](https://www.nytimes.com/1951/08/29/archives/the-screen-dreiser-novel-makes-moving-film-a-place-in-the-sun-based.html) - **The Times**, Kate Muir (90/100, inferred): The film is a retro swoon with devilishly handsome Clift opposite angelically beautiful Taylor in a story of ambition and love at first sight. The critic singles out the glorious costumes by Edith Head. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/theatre-dance/article/a-place-in-the-sun-l0rxjn05nbz) - **Variety**, Herb Golden (90/100, inferred): The critic praises the updated adaptation of Dreiser's novel as distinguished in every way from its predecessor, with meticulous care in all aspects of production and strong performances from Clift, Winters, and especially Taylor. [Read](https://variety.com/1951/film/reviews/a-place-in-the-sun-1200417074/) - **Empire**, David Parkinson (75/100, inferred): The film is an imposing studio achievement whose failings are largely subsumed by the director's conviction and the impossible beauty of its leads. It is worthwhile if only for the chemistry between Clift and Taylor. [Read](https://www.empireonline.com/movies/reviews/place-sun-review/) - **The New Yorker**, John McCarten (70/100, inferred): The review of 'A Place in the Sun' (paired with another film) highlights George Stevens' effective direction in delivering a strong cinematic version of the story. [Read](https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/1951/09/08/1951-09-08-101-tny-cards-000037156) - **Time Out**, Tom Huddleston (3/5): The review calls the film a manipulative psychodrama that is ludicrously overblown and dubious in its social satire, though it still won six Oscars. It praises the unmistakable chemistry between Clift and Taylor as one of cinema’s great portraits of untamed desire, while criticising the broadly drawn characters and Winters’s grotesque portrayal. [Read](https://www.timeout.com/movies/a-place-in-the-sun) ## Details - **Director:** George Stevens - **Director:** George Stevens - **Screenplay:** Michael Wilson, Harry Brown - **Novel:** Theodore Dreiser - **Cinematography:** William C. Mellor - **Editor:** William Hornbeck - **Music:** Franz Waxman - **Costume design:** Edith Head - **Producer:** George Stevens - **Cast:** Montgomery Clift as George Eastman; Elizabeth Taylor as Angela Vickers; Shelley Winters as Alice Tripp; Anne Revere as Hannah Eastman; Keefe Brasselle as Earl Eastman; Fred Clark as Defense Attorney Bellows; Raymond Burr as District Attorney R. Frank Marlowe; Herbert Heyes as Charles Eastman - **Runtime:** 2h 02m - **Certificate (MPA):** NR - **Release (the US):** 28 August 1951 - **Genres:** Drama, Romance, Crime - **Budget:** $2 million - **Box office:** $7 million - **Trailer:** https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sk7a9EyMGiY ## Where to watch in the US - Amazon Prime Video: rent $4.99, hd - Amazon Prime Video: buy $12.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-20.* Also available in: AT, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, ES, FR, GB, HR, HU, IN, IT, JP, LT, MX, NL, NO, NZ, RO, RS, SE, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## Awards - Academy Awards 1952: Best Actor (nominated); Best Actress (nominated); Best Cinematography, Black-and-White (won); Best Costume Design, Black-and-White (won); Best Director (won); Best Film Editing (won); Best Original Dramatic or Comedy Score (won); Best Writing, Adapted Screenplay (won) ## If you liked this - *Sunrise* (1927), Fi1m 88: Murnau’s silent about a husband, a lake and a temptation, and the tenderest camera of its decade — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/sunrise-a-song-of-two-humans.md) - *Room at the Top* (1959), Fi1m 82: The British version of the same hunger: Laurence Harvey climbing, and the woman left behind — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/room-at-the-top.md) - *Plein Soleil* (1960): Alain Delon wants another man’s life on a yacht; Clément keeps the sun merciless - *The Talented Mr. Ripley* (1999), Fi1m 80: A poor young man borrows a rich one’s world and finds it does not give it back — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/the-talented-mr-ripley.md) - *Match Point* (2005): Allen borrows Dreiser’s shape wholesale and moves it to London; the coldest film he has made --- © Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/film/a-place-in-the-sun