The Precise Moment When 'A Place in the Sun' Becomes Superior to Its Source Material Timothy Sexton College

Until Parasite came along, A Place in the Sun was the most persistent and comprehensive critique of capitalism to ever win one of the five major Academy Awards. Its brilliance lies in its disguise as being merely a doomed star-crossed romance. George Stevens’ breathtakingly beautiful black and white classic actually won two of the big five at the Oscars that year: Best Director and Best Screenplay. That it lost Best Picture to An American in Paris remains one of those baffling unsolved mysteries of what exactly goes through the mind of Oscar voters while at the same time so perfectly underscoring the fundamental indecency of the capitalist system as to almost seem designed for that purpose.

A Place in the Sun is based upon one of the most celebrated novels in the history of American literature. Theodore Dreiser took the raw materials of an infamous true-life crime story and repurposed history into a devastating critique of society with the quite specific title An American Tragedy. So massive was his exploration of the effects of society upon the creation of the psychological profile of his protagonist that it was actually initially published in two volumes spanning more than 800 pages. Widely—though not universally—considered...