A Place in the Sun (1951)

Saw A Place in the Sun, a fairly grim but frothy melodrama about a man who is hired to his wealthy uncle's factory.  There, he is ignored by his wealthy relations' family, but he starts to climb the ladder slowly, slowly.  He starts dating one of the other factory workers, in spite of regulations, and he seems to be making a small life when tragedy strikes: he falls in love with one of the women from the world of luxury his uncle inhabits.  Now he's torn between two women: the poor one he's with vs the glamorous dream that's just out of his reach.

The film is about the corrosive effects of the American dream: the lie that capitalism works as a meritocracy.  The film was based on a novel titled An American Tragedy which makes the aims of the story more clear.  The central trouble is that a relationship with this un-glamorous girl he's involved with means a life of poverty and hardship.  She's not as well-dressed as the other woman, but she's sweet and she loves him and cares for him.  In isolation with her, he could be happy.  But how on earth can he be happy when a far more luxurious life of money and power is calling to him, just begging him to abandon his current girl?

And so too with our own lives.  We may not live the most glamorous or comfortable existences, but they could be enough for us, if only we did not have the dream of more always hanging out of our reach.  How can we enjoy what little we have when we know that if only we were a little more cut-throat, if only we were willing to do a little more evil, we could have so much more?

I don't know what the solution to this is.  The main character is meant to represent us and therefore remains sympathetic in spite of it all.  He comes from a religious background which he has abandoned, foreshadowing greater falls from grace to come.  Is a stronger morality then, the proposed solution?  Ironically, the woman who played his religious mother was a communist in real life and would be blacklisted after this film as part of the Red Scare.  She next appeared in Tell Me That You Love Me, Junie Moon in 1970.  Clearly, America was not ready to think about alternative systems just yet.

The film is a bummer, of course.  It's got a lot of glorious melodrama (fainting!  Smoldering close-ups! Silhouettes!) but it ends on a dour note.  It's intended to provoke and to force engagement, so it leaves you unsettled.  It's an interesting film.