Movie Review: Giant (1956)

A sprawling Texas family epic set in the first half of the 20th Century, Giant tackles a myriad of social issues but suffers from a meandering second half.

Jordan “Bick” Benedict Jr. (Rock Hudson) is a wealthy Texas cattle rancher, and an owner of an enormous acreage. He travels to Maryland to buy War Winds, an expensive horse belonging to the Lynnton family. Bick not only buys the horse, but he also falls in love and marries the Lynntons’ daughter Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor).

Upon returning to Texas, Leslie immediately clashes with Bick’s unmarried sister Luz (Mercedes McCambridge), who runs the Benedict household and is threatened by Leslie’s presence.  Upon her death Luz leaves a small parcel of land to Jett Rink (James Dean), a loner ranch hand who maintains a tense relationship with Bick. Jett develops a crush on Leslie, and refuses to sell his newly inherited property despite a seemingly generous offer from Bick.

Leslie proves herself to be tough, independent, and outspoken, and forces Bick to confront sexism and racism issues in his social circle. She demonstrates unusual compassion to Mexican peasants living in a nearby village, and displays disgust when Bick attempts to exclude her from business conversations. Meanwhile, Jett strikes oil and starts to build enormous wealth. Despite tough times, the marriage between Bick and Leslie endures; they raise three children, and have to deal with the trials of parenting and unmet expectations as the oil boom brings unimagined riches and World War Two erupts.

Based on the Edna Ferber book, the first half of Giant is a compelling story of the sophisticated but headstrong Leslie carving out space for herself in the new and strange world of rural Texas. The narrative generates a steady current of topical issues, including attitudinal differences towards the hired help, racial sensitivities, and the status of women. Hudson, Taylor, McCambridge and Dean sparkle as they challenge the prevailing limits, Taylor reveling in the role of Leslie as a change catalyst, upsetting a status quo that already featured simmering and unresolved issues swirling around Jett’s mysterious charisma.

Director George Stevens explores these themes against a backdrop of the wide-open plains of Texas. This is country where the personalities have to be big to match the endless terrain. The film is filled with impressive and sometimes breathtaking widescreen shots that convey the scale of both the expansive outdoors and the lavish indoors, and Stevens then adds the vertical element as an army of oil derricks sprouts out of the earth and reaches for the sky, pumping black gold.

There is enough drama for a complete film in the story of Bick and Leslie meeting and establishing their life together. But Giant is an ambitious 201 minute effort, and the second half inevitably starts to drag. Bick and Leslie's kids grow up and introduce a new dynamic, and the film starts to stutter from one bland familial conflict to another, rehashing themes already chewed on in the first 100 minutes. Jett Rink evolves into a surly oil tycoon, providing James Dean, in his final film role, with the opportunity to indulge in the worst excesses of method mumbling.

Giant also suffers from some simply awful makeup effects when it comes to the aging of Bick, Leslie, and Jett. Hudson, Taylor, and Dean are provided with ridiculous mops of silver blue hair to denote middle age, but otherwise appear to suffer no wrinkles, weight gain or change in posture. The effect is amateurish and becomes an unfortunate distraction in the film’s latter stages.

The large cast helps to maintain interest. Carroll Baker does her best to enliven the second generation as Luz Benedict II, the daughter of Bick and Leslie. Jett’s unsavoury pursuit of the younger Luz is the most interesting sub-plot in the latter stages, as he tries to fill the void of the friendship he had with the older Luz and his unrequited love for Leslie. Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo and Rod Taylor also contribute small supporting roles.

Giant boasts a mammoth scale, and although the achievement does not fully match the intent, the result is impressively grand in scope and ambition.

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The Movies Of James Dean

All movies starring James Dean and reviewed on the Ace Black Movie Blog and are linked below:

Deadline - U.S.A. (1952, uncredited)

East Of Eden (1955)

Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

Giant (1956)

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Movie Review: East Of Eden (1955)

Smouldering sibling rivalry and clandestine family secrets collide to rearrange destinies in the loose adaptation of John Steinbeck's East Of Eden. James Dean's first major screen role establishes his persona as the troubled but thoughtful outsider influencing others while trying to define his place in the world.

With the Great War raging in Europe, innovative California farmer Adam Trask (Raymond Massey) is dabbling with inventions including refrigeration to try and expand the market for his vegetables. His two sons are Aron (Richard Davalos), who seems to have everything going for him including dedicated girlfriend Abra (Julie Harris), and the outcast Cal (Dean), who doesn't seem to fit anywhere and regularly gets himself into trouble. Aron is the apple of his father's eye, while Cal and Adam can hardly have a civilized conversation.

The mother of the two boys is supposed to have died a long time ago, but Cal suspects something different: he regularly travels on top of the train to the nearby coastal town of Monterey, where the popular local brothel is owned by Kate (Jo Van Fleet). Cal has figured out that Kate is his mother, having walked out on the family. Ironically, once Cal's suspicions about his mother are confirmed, his relationship with his Dad improves. He takes on more responsibility running the farm and starts a side business profiting from the rising price of beans. Cal and Abra also find themselves attracted to each other, and the changing dynamics start to tear the family apart.

A story of tense undercurrents threatening tenuous family ties, East of Eden cleverly upends traditional narrative arcs and sizzles with taut anticipation posed by emotional dangers lurking in Adam Trask's household. Although Cal is going to cause damage one way or another, the fraying starts with his unexpected transformation to relative conformity. Once he sorts through the issue of his mother and finds an internal peace, the real turmoil starts.

James Dean introduces the movie world to the misfit post-war teenager persona, caught between dependence and adulthood, clumsily questioning his surroundings and causing discomfort wherever he goes. Dean dominates the screen whenever he is on it, an assertive presence despite a relative scarcity of words. His scenes opposite Massey, the young and the old clashing despite themselves, serve up luscious unease.

Julie Harris as Abra is Dean's counterpoint, and in a demonstration of cool teen magnetism she detaches from the strait-laced Aron and finds common ground with Cal, the rough edges of enigma irresistible compared to bland predictability. Harris teases out the quiet mischief in Abra with a fine performance.

Director Elia Kazan and cinematographer Ted D. McCord add plenty of visual grandeur with California's landscapes, farmland, and scenes of train transportation allowed to flourish in CinemaScope. The openness of the land is held in contrast to the fragile threads holding the characters together.

Familial relationships never stop evolving, and East Of Eden revelatory emotions accompany the unexpected rewiring of ties that bind.

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Movie Review: Rebel Without A Cause (1955)

Rebel Without A Cause is one of the earliest serious teenage dramas, an examination of the seemingly insurmountable agony faced by young people in the face of clueless parents. It is also a gripping film, tightly directed by Nicholas Ray, who extracts enthralling, haunting, and career-defining performances from James Dean, Natalie Wood and Sal Mineo.

Jim (Dean), Judy (Wood), and John, nicknamed Plato (Mineo) are deeply troubled Los Angeles teenagers: all three are suffering from severe conflicts with their parents. Jim's dad is spineless, and his mother domineering. Judy is getting no affection and a lot of verbal abuse from her father, and she is hanging out with "the kids", the local bully gang and their leader Buzz. Plato's parents are simply not there: he does not really know anything about his father, and his mother recently abandoned him, leaving him in the care of a housekeeper.

After an evening when their lives cross at the local police juvenile office, Plato befriends Jim and sees in him a replacement father figure. Jim is attracted to Judy, but she pretends to be more interested in fitting in with the kids while flirting with Buzz. Jim is soon on the wrong side of the kids and agrees to challenge Buzz in a chicken run: an illegal car race towards a sheer cliff, with the first to bail labelled a chicken. As Judy, Plato, and the rest of the local teenagers watch, the race ends in tragedy. Judy and Jim warm up to each other, but the bully boys want to silence Jim before he talks to the police about the illegal race.

Rebel Without A Cause features a memorable and dominant James Dean performance. Showing remarkable vulnerability and anguish, his portrayal of Jim Stark as a tormented teenager crying out for guidance is riveting. The movie piles the pressure on Jim: he get no help from his Dad; the local bullies turn against him; all of a sudden Jim is thrust into the role of Plato's surrogate Dad; and his first, seemingly innocuous mis-step as a father figure results in a calamity. The film at least offers some hope that with a woman believing in him, things could get better.

James Dean at 24 years old, Natalie Wood at 17 and Sal Mineo at 16 dominate Rebel Without A Cause, and enshrine their screen personas: Dean as the cool but troubled soul; Wood as the innocent but dangerous girl, and Mineo as the sad misfit. Their performances shine through the film, and into legend.

In one of movie history's cruel twists, all three suffered unexpected deaths. Dean perished in a head-on car crash later in 1955, the same year that Rebel was released, and just three films into his career. Mineo was murdered in a 1976 random stabbing. Wood accidentally drowned in 1981, after falling overboard from a yacht.

Rebel Without A Cause draws a straight, bold line between failed parenting, specifically failed fatherhood, and troubled teenagers. The film is not subtle about Jim's emancipated dad utterly failing to provide any guidance about becoming a man. Judy's father appears unable to deal with her as a woman rather than a child. And the void created by the absence of a father figure in Plato's life is the core of his journey into darkness. In the absence of a named cause, disillusionment stemming from emotional abandonment will have to do.

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