Giant

Movie Review: Giant

Year of Release: 1956
Country of Origin: USA
Director: George Stevens
Cast: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Carroll Baker

Plot outline: Sprawling epic covering the life of a Texas cattle rancher and his family and associates (IMDb).

In movie version of Edna Ferber's big Texas novel "Giant", George Stevens takes three hours and seventeen minutes to put his story across. Hewing pretty closely to the content of Ferber's agitating tale of contemporary Texas cattle barons and newly rich oil tycoons, Stevens and his able screenwriters have contrived a tremendously vivid picture-drama that gushes a tawdry tragedy. And he has made it visual in staggering scenes of the great Texas plains and of passion-charged human relations that hold the hardness of the land and atmosphere. In strong swipes of outdoor realism and audaciously close-to interplay of invariably violent emotions among its lively characters, Giant gives an almost documentary picture of how oil exaggerated and confused the virtually feudalistic ways of living of the old Texas landowners and cattlemen. It visions the change of social standards from rugged individuality to the massive and vulgar acceptance of running in plutocratic herds. It does not wax moralistic. It simply presents what has occurred - or what Ferber and Stevens tell us is the reason that Texas is as it is today. Perhaps because Stevens has attempted to include the full content of Ferber's story and then a good bit more, it does have a way of becoming a trifle rambling and overwrought at times. Dramatic emphasis changes from one to another theme. Despite the confusion of issues, the whole picture flows rapidly and is a series of fascinating episodes that illuminates its complexities. Thanks to Stevens' brilliant structure and handling of images, every scene and every moment is a pleasure. He makes "picture" the essence of his movie. Under his direction, an exceptionally well-chosen cast does some exciting performing. Elizabeth Taylor as the ranchman's lovely wife, from whose point of observation we actually view what goes on, makes a woman of spirit and sensitivity who acquires tolerance and grows old gracefully. And Rock Hudson is handsome, stubborn and perverse but oddly humble as her spouse. However, it is James Dean who makes the malignant role of the surly ranch hand who becomes an oil baron the most tangy and corrosive in the movie. Dean plays this curious villain with a stylized spookiness - a sly sort of off-beat languor and slur of language - that concentrates spite. This is a haunting capstone to the brief career of Dean. Others, too, are excellent - Chill Wills as an old Texas type, Jane Withers as a plump and uncouth heiress, Mercedes McCambridge as a bitter, cold old maid, Charles Watts as a hypocritical windbag and Carroll Baker as a spirited Texas deb. (NYT)

My judgement: *** out of 4 stars