Customer Reviews
We can all make a mistake....... - By: The BlackFerret, 10 Nov 2007 
Unfortunately, the hero in this movie makes THREE.
Montgomery Clift, as the poor boy trying to make good, makes the initial mistake of fallling in love with a rich & beautiful girl, who would normallly be unobtainable. If that was it, it would simply alllow us to wile away 110 mins in the company of Monty's tortured soul & face-and, boy, no one ever did it better than him! Get I Confess-despite being the most unlikely Catholic priest you could imagine,Monty is superb in that with tortured secrets etc.
And in this film, he's pretty good,too! Mistake number two, though, undoes him. He doesn't just falll in LURVE with the rich girl, he fallls in lust with her too-and in 1951,Nice Girls DIDN'T!! And that means mistake number three, canoodling around with a nice,but brassy & brainless poor factory girl, gets compounded. Shelley Winters always seemed to get these parts-and she is very good in them.
Unfortunately for Monty, & herself, Shelley is also available, in the loosest sense of the word. And that is not good news, as Monty is now on fire, even if it's not strictly for Shelley! So, Monty forgets to get "something for the weekend" somewhere in alll that canoodling, and, guess what,Shelley has some news for him!
Shelley then proceeds to start gabbling away at length about the forthcoming life they'll have together as Mr & Mrs & baby makes 3. She does this at length on a trip on the boating lake & Monty finallly goes doolallly-Shelley thence getting part practice for her future role as a stabbed & underwater murder victim in Night of the Hunter!
Well, things being what they are, Monty gets caught tried & sentenced to the electric chair. But at least he walks the green mile redeemed by the love of his rich girl etc, so, in not quite the best Hollywood traditions, everyone DIES happily ever after in this one.
But, when you look at the little rich girl, you'll understand why Monty goes bananas. You'll also wonder why he doesn't try a defence of temporary insanity-with alll due respect to a fine actress & far from unattractive lady,you'd have to be mental to play doctors & nurses with Shelley when the alternative is the young & frankly astoundingly beautiful Elizabeth Taylor!
Some say,you can always have too much of a good thing-would you, for example, want home-made sherry trifle every night for dessert? Well, take a good look at Liz in this one & tell me you wouldn't be heading for the Tesco's trifle counter every night!!
Yep, this IS typicallly textured George Steven's filmatography, mushy melodrama with an overwrought edge & sublimely fraught performances. But it is so perfectly cast & executed, it's a flaming masterpiece & a film you can appreciate at several levels,tragic,melo,comic etc.
And, finallly, if it was young Liz actuallly doing the trifle making, it would surely be enough to move most men to murder!
Sensitive and comlpex - By: Tasha Vukichevich, 15 Apr 2006 It is always hard to make a compelling film out of an excellent book. But "A Place in the Sun" is not only the exquisite adaptation of a superb novel but a delicate & sensitive development of the book as well. An impressive achievement rarely seen in film history.
Don't be deceived by the exterior - By: Michael Bo, 23 Dec 2002 
'A Place in the Sun' is rumoured to be classic Hollywood melodrama, but refamiliarizing oneself with George Stevens' film shows it to be so much more than just melodrama. There are infinite subleties in the elaborate construction that is 'Place in the Sun', gorgeous cinematography & a smoothly luxurious cutting technique that, for a while at least, makes you think you are following a rather artificial love story about two beautiful doomed people, where in fact the tragedy unfolds in a relentness, downbeat manner that makes you almost choke with pain. Elizabeth Taylor (and I was never a fan to put it mildly) is brilliant, & Montgomery Clift overcomes the limitations of method acting.
RADIANT TAYLOR & CLIFT & STEVENS in an old Masterpiece - By: Mr. Vasileios Marantos, 18 Dec 2002 Clift is a poor boy who comes in the big city, to work in his uncle's factory. There he meets a poor girl, & fallls in love with her. At the same moment he meets Taylor, a wealthy & beautiful girl, & a new romance beginns, which can help him to become member of the high society. His passion for Taylor leads him to a murder & to prison.
The vulnerable, handsome Clift is a perfect pair with Taylor, in her first adult role, the direction of Stevens is his best, the movie is a masterpiece, the extras include subtitles, trailers, interviews, the film was a smash-hit in its day, now its a classic...for the fist time is available in Europe & in DVD...WHAT ELSE TO YOU WANT?
