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Populär Culture Review
films and points in time, Clift recycles his look mentioned above from A Place
in the Sun in The Defector and his “gone native” appearance utilized when his
military uniform becomes soiled in The Big Lift for the escape scene in The
Defector. By doing so, Clift demonstrates an ability to exist outside o f time in
the context of how he was conceptualized through attire.
III. Clift and the 1960s
1. The Antidote for Bond:
Beginning in 1962 with Dr. No, the James Bond series has attained
iconic global Status. Bond is everything Clift is not: cocky, irresistible to women
and largely defined by his clothes, gadgetry and catchphrase: “Martini, shaken,
not stirred.” While the series has provided brainless escapism, it has also been
criticized for its blatant objectification of women—captured by what Robert Arp
and Kevin Decker refer to as the “Male Gaze” of Bond (202-203). With the
exception of the Shelly Winters character in A Place in the Sun, Clift is
altemately drawn to the totality of woman as provider (The Heiress), life partner
(From Here to Eternity), confldant (The Misfits) and intellectual companion
(The Defector). Ultimately, it has been Clift, not Bond, who continues to leave
audiences shaken (A Place in the Sun, Judgment at Nuremburg, 1961) and
stirred (Red River, The Search, From Here to Eternity). While Bond has always
been a clever, cliched product of savvy marketing, Clift defies categorization.
The distinction between Clift and Bond (or, indeed Clift and his cliched costars—Douglas in The Big Lift, Lancaster and Sinatra in From Here to Eternity)
is well-delineated by McGurk: “His (Clift’s) performances still carry the ability
to shock audiences with a singulär originality; his performances are a cut above
the cheap stereotypes which many actors safely trade upon.”
2. Cliftian Elements in the British Social Realist Movement:
While the films of the British Social Realist Movement (BSRM) tend
to focus topically on bleak, gritty, urban, distinctly working-class environments,
Clift’s films are not so neatly demarcated by dass or grungy municipal environs.
However, the emotional elements common in films of the BSRM—isolation,
rebellion against the existing regime and economic struggles—are integral
elements of many of Clift’s films. One observes all of the aforementioned
attributes in three of Clift’s most famous works: The Heiress (1949), A Place in
the Sun and The Misfits. Furthermore, in each film, Clift’s desire to improve his
lot financially leads him down the road to ruin. We observe Clift as mercenary
fortune-hunter in The Heiress, only to have the tables tumed on him by the
object of his affection. In A Place in the Sun, it is Clift’s ambition to rise above
his working-class upbringing that ultimately leads to him being convicted of
murder and in The Misfits. It is Clift’s conflicted desire to avoid “working for
the man” (inculcated by the line from both he and Clark Gable’s character,
“Anything’s better than wages”) and his drive to eam a living as a rodeo
performer and wild horse roper that leave him frequently concussed and