George Eastman is the broke nephew of the rich industrialist Charles Eastman. George arrives in town after the lucky meeting with his uncle while he was working in a hotel in Chicago. Charles offers his nephew a job in his factory. There he meets Alice the worker and they start to date. At a social event organised by his uncle he meets Angela, a high society girl that George had already noticed and they fall in love with each other. But Alice gets pregnant and wants him to marry her, although George is already infatuated by high society and by Angela’s beauty and ignores the problem. After a failed abortion, since George continues to prefer Angela, Alice insists that he must marry her. So the young man invites her to the lake, after hearing about a couple drowning but never found. Here, his plan to kill Alice vanishes, but because of an accident he isn't able to repair, Alice drowns. Despite it's an unintentional murder, he is judged guilty of voluntary manslaughter and is convicted. The film was a success, Charlie Chaplin said he saw the most beautiful film made in America. We must point out that it was rare to see an actor playing a negative character in Hollywood. It has been scaled down over time because of the indulgent script to a melodramatic and calm work (which won the Oscar) but it actually remains a film with great performances and a great direction as well as a cross-section of a certain type of America. For the American Film Institute, it’s still one of the best 100 films of the cinema history and the British Film Institute again showed it in UK theatres in 2013. It won 6 Oscars (Director, Photography, Music, Script, Editing and Customs) and Clift and Winters were nominated without winning.
