They call it Giant because everything in this picture is big, from the generous running time (more than 200 minutes) to the sprawling ranch location (a horizon-to-horizon plain with a lonely, modest mansion dropped in the middle) to the high-powered stars. Stocky Rock Hudson stars as the confident, stubborn young ranch baron Bick Benedict, who woos and wins the hand of Southern belle Elizabeth Taylor, a seemingly demure young beauty who proves to be Hudson's match after she settles into the family homestead. For many the film is chiefly remembered for James Dean's final performance, as poor former ranch hand Jett Rink, who strikes oil and transforms himself into a flamboyant millionaire playboy. Director George Stevens won his second Oscar for this ambitious, grandly realized (if sometimes slow moving) epic of the changing socioeconomic (and physical) landscape of modern Texas, based on Edna Ferber's bestselling novel. The talented supporting cast includes Mercedes McCambridge as Bick's frustrated sister, put out by the new "woman of the house"; Chill Wills as the Benedicts' garrulous rancher neighbor; Carroll Baker and Dennis Hopper as the Benedicts' rebellious children; and Earl Holliman and Sal Mineo as dedicated ranch hands. --Sean Axmaker
(23 votes)
2.
Texan rancher Bick Benedict visits a Maryland farm to buy a prize horse. Whilst there he meets and falls in love with the owner's daughter Leslie, they are married immediately and return to his ranch. The story of their family and its rivalry with cowboy and (later oil tycoon) Jett Rink unfolds across two generations.
(23 votes)
3.
The American domestic epic endured long into the post-war era, with Giant (1956) one of its last real manifestations. Director George Stevens gets real panoramic sweep in his adaptation of Edna Ferber's novel of social and economic change in rural Texas from the 1920s to the 1950s. Rock Hudson is imposing if uninvolving as rancher Vernon Reata II, constantly torn between his image and his humanity. As his wife Lesley, Elizabeth Taylor gives one of her most rounded performances as the Maryland girl whose liberal outlook causes friction within the social (and racial) mindset of the insular community as it lurches from rigid conservatism to mindless materialism over three decades.
The film is best remembered for James Dean in what was his third and last screen appearance. He cuts a distinctive figure as Jet Rink, social outcast turned oil tycoon. The bravura of his inebriated speech before an empty banqueting hall would be no less memorable had his career not been curtailed days after shooting ended. The secondary roles are decently taken: look out for a teenage Denis Hopper, sallow but likeable as the gauche Vernon Reata III.
On the DVD:Giant is evenly divided over two discs. Widescreen picture quality is excellent and the remastered soundtrack gives Dimitri Tiomkin's score a new lease of life. A laudable 56 chapter points are provided, with dubbing in English, French and Italian and subtitles in eight languages. A running commentary, though informative, is really for aficionados only, but the 45 minutes (on the second disc) of George Stevens recollections from heavyweights such as Herman J. Mankiewicz, Alan J Pakula and Fred Zinnemann ideally complements this sprawling but often compulsive old-school American movie. --Richard Whitehouse
(23 votes)
4.
Edna Ferber's best-selling family saga was the source of Stevens' sprawling epic, which stars Rock Hudson, Elizabeth Taylor, and James Dean, in his last film appearance. When Texas cattleman Bick Benedict (Hudson) goes to Virginia in the early 1920s to buy a prize stallion, he falls in love with Leslie Lynnton (Taylor), an aristocratic, independent-minded beauty, and they quickly marry. He takes her back to Reata, his 600,000-acre ranch, where sister Luz (Mercedes McCambridge), the family matriarch, does her best to make Leslie feel unwelcome. Leslie is appalled by the second-class status accorded to women and racist attitudes toward the local Mexicans, neither of which seem to bother her husband. Out of compassion, she befriends surly ranch hand Jett Rink (James Dean), who comes to worship her from afar, envying Bick for both his wealth and his wife. He strikes oil on land bequeathed to him by the deceased Luz and his wealth and power grow apace. As the years pass, the bewildered Bick often finds his children thwarting his wishes and criticizing his beliefs, pushing the millionaire to question his values for the first time in his life. The film's outstanding cast, which also features Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo, Carroll Baker, Earl Holliman, and Chill Wills, inject vitality into a project that occasionally suffers from longueurs.
(22 votes)
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