A Place in the Sun Literary Elements

A Place in the Sun Literary Elements

Director

George Stevens

Leading Actors/Actresses

Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor

Supporting Actors/Actresses

Shelley Winters, Raymond Burr

Genre

Drama/Romance/Social commentary

Language

English

Awards

Academy Awards: Best Director, Best Screenplay, Best Cinematography, Best Costume Design, Best Film Editing, Best Musical Score for a Drama or Comedy

Date of Release

November 9, 1951

Producer

George Stevens

Setting and Context

Early 1950s. Exact location is never precisely identified.

Narrator and Point of View

The film offers no voiceover narration. The point of view is through the perspective of George Eastman.

Tone and Mood

Deceptively dark and cynical beneath an ironic veneer of romance.

Protagonist and Antagonist

Protagonist: George Eastman. Antagonist: The negative consequences of the capitalist system.

Major Conflict

George Eastman versus the myth of American capitalism and the empty promises of the American Dream.

Climax

George Eastman as a “dead man walking” to the electric chair after possibly being wrongly convicted of first degree murder.

Foreshadowing

When George asks Alice if she doesn’t like wearing swimsuits because of how she looks in them, she replies that she never learned how to swim. The revelation of this detail of her life will intensity throughout the film.

Understatement

The portrayal of pre-marital sex between George and Alice—which was considered taboo and thus subject to Hollywood’s code of censorship—is portrayed in a classically understated way by having the camera remain focused on a radio sitting in the windowsill as night turns into the next day.

Innovations in Filming or Lighting or Camera Techniques

The sound of the speedboats on the lake was enhanced in the editing room by adding audio from German dive bombers to increase the intensity. The familiarity of that specific sound of military plane diving would still have been fresh enough to original viewers from newsreels of World War II to subconsciously stimulate feelings of dread and anxiety.

Allusions

In the opening scene, George is wearing a policeman’s jacket notably missing a badge. This could be viewed either as allusion to the dark history of the character’s backstory which is provided in the novel upon which it is based or as a symbol of the lack of economic justice in America.

Paradox

N/A

Parallelism

The entire film is constructed upon a foundation of parallelism as a juxtaposition. Alice and Angela have similar names that are paralleled through their initial. Alice works for a company that sells swimsuits while Angela actually wears a swimsuit at one point. Angela and George go flying around the lake on a speedboat while Alice does while in a canoe with George. Both women express anxiety about the consequences of being seen with George but for different reasons.

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