The AFI Project

Two weeks ago I wrote about my friends Layla and Keith's ongoing mission to watch every movie on the American Film Institute's Top 100 list. Recently Layla left an update in the comments section of that post. Apparently they're still committed to the project but are taking a break; however, Layla shared some funny insights on the movies they've seen so far, so make sure you check out her writeup. My favorite: "A Place in the Sun (Shelly Winters really did deserve to die in this film)." Curiously, Layla echoes the great Pauline Kael, who if I'm remembering correctly described Shelley Winters's death in A Place in the Sun as a "mercy killing."

Also curiously, I wrote about the character on whom Shelley Winters's character is based last year, when I was droning on and on about Theodore Dreiser, whose novel An American Tragedy was adapted into A Place in the Sun. Not surprisingly, the character in the book -- Roberta -- is a bit more complicated and enormously more sympathetic than the harping jellyfish played by Shelley Winters. Or, at the very least, I didn't remember wanting to kill her with my own bare hands, which is something of an improvement over my reaction to the character in the movie.