George Eastman, a handsome and charming but basically aimless young man who goes to work in a factory run by a distant, wealthy relative. Feeling lonely one evening, he has a brief rendezvous with assembly-line worker Alice Tripp, but he forgets all about her when he falls for dazzling socialite Angela Vickers. Alice can';;t forget about him, though: she is pregnant with his child. Just when George';;s personal and professional futures seem assured, Alice demands that he marry her or she';;ll expose him to his society friends.
Typically slow and stately in the later Stevens manner.
EmanuelLevy.Com
March 03, 2008
Though not as powerful as Von Sternberg's first version, it still merits attention for the strong perfromances of Clift, Taylor, and Shelley Winters--and that mega clos-up of a kiss, which broke records of erotic imagery at the time.
Hopelessly inadequate as a reading of Dreiser's great novel, and as usual Stevens seems too preoccupied with the story's monumentality to have much curiosity about its characters.
One of the great studio dramas of the period and one of this column's favourite films, with haunting performances from Elizabeth Taylor and Montgomery Clift.
A good example of the kind of soporific nonsense that won rave reviews and armloads of Academy Awards back in the 50s, while the finest work of Ford, Hawks, and Hitchcock was being ignored.
