Winters Wonderland

Brian Casey 11/27/2009 6:06:00 PM

Though Winters is superb as the jilted working-class girl in "A Place in the Sun", her performance does not trump Montgomery Clift's brilliant and complex turn. Clift achieves the near-miraculous feat of rendering a disingenous, two-timing, self-involved cad willing to cold-bloodedly murder his lover and their unborn child into a complex and sympathetic character. Given the daunting challenge of portraying an introverted, quiet, inarticulate character with relatively little dialogue, Clift conveys the thoughts and emotions of his character with only facial expressions, gestures and body language more powerfully and convincingly than most actors can achieve with reams of dialogue. Winters is great and Taylor is surprisingly good (and not-so-surprisingly stunning)but, Clift is the masterful axis on which this great film turns.