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.
