A Place in the Sun

Director: George Stevens

1952 / 122min / 35mm

Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift at their most supernally beautiful, Shelly Winters at her most haplessly victimizable, and director Stevens at the height of his impeccable craft—this adaptation of Theodore Dreiser’s An American Tragedy isn’t a classic for nothing, shot in gorgeous black-and-white photography whose glint betrays sinister tidings. Clift is the poor, earnest striver who sees a passport to the promised land when rich girl Taylor takes an interest in him, but first he must sever his attachment to factory girl Winters—by whatever means necessary.