'A Place In The Sun'

It's hard to believe that Montgomery Clift's George Eastman could have attempted such a poor murder. Eastman was an ill-fated kid from the beginning. His total lack of brains trying to undo the tangled web he weaved just exacerbated his ineptness.

Eastman was a poor son of a street evangelist when he met a rich, industrialist uncle. He moves to work for the family company and he quickly rises through the ranks through hard work. He starts dating Al Tripp, but also catches the eye of the glamorous Angela Vickers, portrayed by Elizabeth Taylor.

After a while, he wants to marry Vickers, but he got Tripp preggers and is being forced to marry her. One finding out about the other ruins him professionally and personally.

So he comes up with a dumb plan to murder Tripp. Generally, murder hardly ever works. But it's the early 1950s where most crimes were solved via eye witness accounts. If Eastman could avoid witnesses, he'd be in the clear. Instead, he engaged the boat ramp guy and the kid hanging out in the woods in the middle of the night (what exactly was he doing?)

Under the premise that there are numerous deaths in the lake the previous years, he gets a boat and right as he's ready to murder his girlfriend, the boat overturns, Al is lost and drowns. The body is drudged up a day later and they automatically look at Eastman as the main culprit.

For one, why not just dump the girl? Send her to her mother's in order that baby is cared for. There are ways to get out of this. It's the 1950s!

The whole plan is flawed. Once Eastman learned that he'd need to talk to the boat vendor, he should have called it off. Or killed the boat vendor.

Two, why not commit the murder and go directly to the police? If Eastman kills Tripp, he should have gone to shore and autmatically called the police. And he would have been exonerated. What killed Tripp was the silence and uncooperativeness of Eastman during the investigation. He clearly had something to hide and Raymond Burr knew it.

A Place in the Sun was nominated for nine Academy Awards. Won six, but missed out on Best Film, Actor and Actress. Of the top awards, it won for Best Director.