Giant

At its core, Giant is about the history of Texas experienced through the lives of one prominent family, from the central couple’s marriage into their old age. This both works in the films favor and causes most of its problems.

Giant does an excellent job of making you feel the vast scope of its subject matter. It is reflected in the cinematography. The film is packed with gorgeous shots that capture the majesty of Texas. At the beginning of the film, wide shots with plenty of empty space in the frame are used to accentuate the emptiness of the landscape during the days of cattle rearing. The use of these wide shots then continues throughout the film bringing the same sense of size to the forests of oil wells after the crude oil boom and to the proliferation of skyscrapers as the big cities modernize. It is also reflected in the editing. Early in the movie, shots of the family’s near empty, mansion-like house are edited against shots where the house itself is dwarfed by the enormity of the land on which it sits. Later, when the land fills up, as it becomes industrialized, so does the house, as it becomes more of a home. In this way, the editing and cinematography work together to capture another way in which the film is vast: its ambitious story.

With a runtime past three hours, Giant is constructed of many loosely connected moments, told almost like short stories, that change theme and focus as both the family ages and the face of Texas changes. Bick, played by Rock Hudson, and Leslie, played by Elizabeth Taylor, start the film as a young couple and end it as grandparents. Along that journey, their family, the Benedicts, face problems inspired by the sweep of history. These conflicts are interpersonal, such as East Coast and Western values clashing, and external, such as World War II and its costs. The performances of all the major characters draw you into their world, lending believably to their struggles, and by the end you feel like you’ve gone on an amazing journey with them, experiencing the saga of their lives.

However, I think this scope in storytelling is also where some of the weaknesses of the piece can be found. For all the film does well, there is a lack of cohesion in the narrative. While each short story works well alone, there frequently isn’t much that ties any two together, thematically or narratively. A character choice may matter in the current story but won’t then ripple out through the rest the movie. For example, Hudson and Taylor spar over the role of women in the house, then put it to bed abruptly. One might expect this issue to come up again, as it wasn’t really resolved. One might even expect for it to come up repeatedly, as a tool for character development, to show how the two change and adapt their views over time as partners. However, the issue is never touched on again. This kind of writing plagues the movie. For it to really work as an epic saga, I think there needs to be more that shapes the narrative over time than just the characters growing old.

That isn’t to say that no thematic material exists. One of the thematic ideas repeated throughout is race. It doesn’t appear in all of the stories, and sometimes takes a backseat in the stories in which it is present, but it is there as a recurring idea. I have a pet theory that this movie uses anti-Mexican racism as a way to talk about anti-Black racism without it being obvious, similar to how Shakespeare frequently set his plays in Italy instead of England so he could comment on local issues without offending local audiences.

I found it particularly impressive how ahead of its time Giant was on the issue of race. Predating the civil rights movement by almost a decade, this film takes a remarkably progressive stance. The vastness of scope of the movie allows it to tackle everything from discrimination in the service economy to how society treated miscegenation. A source of conflict between Bick and Leslie stems from the status of the Tejano (Mexican Texans) laborers that service the ranch. She feels compassion for them and is concerned with the poor conditions under which they live and work, whereas he shows a disregard for them, ostensibly based in old tensions from the Texas Revolution. His evolving and improving relationship with the Tejanos is also one of the few character arcs that actually carries through from the beginning to the end of the movie. When it makes the issues central to the story, Giant communicates a compelling anti-discrimination and anti-segregation message.

The other main point of thematic cohesion is the fraught relationship between Bick and his field hand come rival Jet, played by James Dean. They are played artfully as foils for one another, particularly around the issue of race. Jet appears more sympathetic to the plight of the Tejanos who work the range when explaining their situation to Leslie early in the film. However, once Jet comes into money, his true feelings are made clear. He is unwilling to show civility on the issue even as he courts a girl whose sister-in-law is Mexican. Bick, on the other hand, begins by showing disdain for the Tejanos, but over time shifts towards apathy and eventually acceptance as his life experiences open his eyes to the foolishness of his old ways.

James Dean is great in this movie, playing the complicated and self-destructive Jet. However, I do wonder if his presence skews the conversation about Giant in ways that aren’t true to the actual source material. The level of attention given to Dean is completely disproportionate to his importance to the film. Modern materials, such as DVD covers and posters, are either dominated by Dean’s presence or put Dean prominently in the foreground. Similarly, the movie descriptions provided by rental and online viewing services typically insinuate a love triangle between Bick, Leslie, and Jet. I even went in expecting Giant to be a high-brow melodrama like the plays of Tennessee Williams. This interpretation only makes sense if you can’t see Dean as anything other than his Rebel Without A Cause character. Jet isn’t a smoldering lead primed to win Leslie’s heart, but a jealous, insecure supporting character who exists to show that money can’t buy class. He gives a killer performance but his outsized legend creates a shadow that hangs over the movie; a movie that isn’t about him, but about about Hudson and Taylor’s Bick and Leslie.

Giant is great but not exceptional. It has a lot of flaws but its ambition and how ahead of its time it was on certain social issues both elevate it to something special. It can be appreciated for its technical brilliance, especially in cinematography, for its place in film history, and for its strong performances. However, its reputation is that of something superlative and when compared to the other great epics of film history, it misses the mark. The very best epic movies are grand in scope, beautifully shot, and have a gripping narrative. Giant only nails two out of the three, but honestly, compared to the mountains of mediocrity out there, that still isn’t too bad.

Would Recommend: If you love big films about big country.

Would Not Recommend: If you demand a tight, traditional narrative.