Giant

George Stevens has a theme that can be felt in most of his films: racism. He didn’t like racism and made that clear in his filmography. But he also didn’t go about it like he was preaching from a pulpit, the way Stanley Kramer did in Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, where he had Spencer Tracy outright spell out the themes of that picture in the final act. Instead, he would incorporate it into the plot in an organic way, allowing the characters to grow over time. This is especially relevant in his 1956 western epic, Giant, about cowboys and oil barons, love and family, and everything in between. Giant is widely credited as being the inspiration for the hugely popular 1980s television drama, Dallas, complete with the battles between oilmen and cattlemen. It borders on being a soap opera in tone, which is exacerbated by its mammoth running time but avoids crossing that border thanks to an all-star cast that elevates the production in every way. There are no sour notes among the cast, and the cinematography picks up the Texas setting perfectly. This movie is an epic in every sense of the word. 

The story begins in the mid-1920s with wealthy Texas ranch owner Jordan “Bick” Benedict Jr. (Rock Hudson) traveling north to Maryland to purchase a horse. While there, he meets socialite Leslie Lynnton (Elizabeth Taylor), and the two quickly fall in love and are married. Upon returning home to his ranch, he finds that his sister, Luz (Mercedes McCambridge), is unhappy with the union and is not afraid to make her feelings known. Luz is also harsh with the ranch workers, mostly Mexicans, as is her brother, Bick. When Leslie tries to be polite to the Mexican workers, Bick tries to dissuade her, much to her frustration. Also working at the ranch is Jett Rink (James Dean), a man with a chip on his shoulder over the Benedict family, all except Luz, who has gone against her brother’s wishes and kept him on after Bick had fired him. 

To spite Leslie, whom Luz sees as a usurper, Luz takes off on her horse, the one Bick purchased in Maryland, and is overly rough with it, kicking in her spurs brutally. She is thrown from the horse and hits her head, dying from the injury. For reasons not spelled out, she wills a piece of their land to Jett, who refuses to sell it back to the Benedicts even though he is offered twice the value. Instead, he starts building on it and eventually discovers oil on the land. As the years go by, Leslie and Bick have children, all of whom have designs for their lives that do not include taking over the ranch after Bick retires. Jordan III “Jordy” marries a Mexican woman and has a mixed-race child that Bick resents but Leslie adores. Judy, Jordy’s twin, wants to attend a school for animal husbandry rather than attend a finishing school in Switzerland, and Luz II, the youngest, is flirtatious with Jett, who has expanded his oil business into a massive industry, eventually leasing the Benedict’s land to even further his new empire. Bick continues to hate man even though he is profiting millions off of the oil being drilled from his land. 

Roger Ebert opined that a bad movie is always too long, and a good movie is never long enough. I would argue with that assessment by saying a good movie is always just the right length. At nearly 3 1/2 hours long, Giant is a long movie. It never feels like it is dragging, but it also doesn’t feel like it could sustain a longer runtime, either. This is not a story that I would like to see expanded into a limited-run mini-series, expanding the plot out to five or six one-hour episodes. It is just the right length to get across the large amount of time that is passing from the beginning of the story to the end, and it doesn’t need to belabor the point. I have never watched Dallas and I don’t know if anything beyond the oil and cattle themes carries over to that show so I cannot compare the two and how the latter show expands the concept across many seasons. 

One word kept coming to mind as I watched this film: legacy. Our legacy is what we leave behind after we are gone. Bick thinks of his land and the cattle as his legacy and wants his son to take on that legacy once he can no longer do it himself. Jordy, however, has never been much of a cowboy, even crying in fear as a child when his father tried to teach him how to ride a horse. Jordy, instead, wants to be a doctor, a noble profession, but Bick tries to forbid him because that doesn’t fit into his ideas of the family legacy. Jordy is his only son, and Bick’s old-fashioned way of thinking leaves him believing it is his son’s duty to take over the ranch and extend that family legacy. He is furthermore incensed when Jordy marries a Mexican woman and has a child of mixed heritage that will “sully” that legacy. 

But there is a lot more to legacy than just the physical things we leave behind. If Bick represents old-time values, Leslie represents the future. She is a progressive woman, even though her own background has some interesting aspects to it, too. When we first meet her and her family, it’s glaringly obvious that they have a black servant that probably originated as, or at least descended from, a slave. While there are no examples of the family talking down to him, they don’t treat him like an equal, either; Maryland was a slave state during the Civil War era but did not side with the Confederacy during the war. Leslie would have been raised around people who lived through a time when black people didn’t have the freedoms they should have had, and so it is interesting to see her have such a progressive view on the world. This view puts her at odds with Bick often enough, yet she only once lets things get to the point that she has to take a break from him and take the kids on an extended trip to her parents. 

It takes Bick a lot of years to start seeing things the way she does, and even in the end, he is not quite there. When Jordy gets in a fight with Jett over Jordy’s wife being denied services at one of Jett’s establishments because of her race, Bick steps in, not to defend the wife and her rights but because Jett knocked down Jordy in front of the elite residents of the area. Jordy even calls him out for it, pointing out how backwards his father’s mindset is. Later, Bick, along with Leslie, Jordy, and his family, go to a diner to eat, only to experience a racial comment from the owner. Bick takes notice but lets it slide since they are allowed to stay and eat. However, a minute later, a Mexican couple arrives, and the owner gets angry and tries to physically throw them out. Only then does Bick stand up and take the man on. He loses the fight badly, but that isn’t the point. He stood up for someone he didn’t know who was being treated badly because of their race. The man in the beginning of the film would not have done that, but years of being married to Leslie have finally worn off on him. Leslie even tells him later that he was her hero that day for the first time in their married life. She also tells him that she considers their family legacy a success as the two look upon their two grandchildren, one white and one Hispanic, standing side by side in their shared playpen.

This was the last of three films that James Dean starred in. He only lived to see one of the three released in theaters, with the other two filmed back to back and released posthumously. He was getting into racing at the time and had signed an agreement with the studio not to race his car during the filming. Upon completing his last day of filming, he elected to drive his new Porsche 550 Spyder north to Salinas to break it in. A vehicle turned in front of him, cutting him off; he was speeding at the time and couldn’t stop before colliding with it. He was trapped inside and died from numerous fatal injuries, including a broken neck. He had filmed all of his scenes for Giant but hadn’t finished all the looping, i.e. voice dubbing, at the time. Consequentially, during his final scene in the film when he is drunken and mumbling a lot, that is someone else’s voice doubling for the deceased actor.

There is a lot of speculation as to what type of career James Dean would have had had he survived the crash. He had a way of acting that was unique but would have probably not worked well as the actor aged. He either would have had to adjust or be cast in fewer and fewer films the older he got. It’s interesting to watch him in this because he makes some very strange and compelling choices portraying Jett. There is a scene towards the end of the film when he is dining with the youngest Benedict daughter, Luz II. He is trying to propose to her but cannot bring himself to outright ask her. Ultimately, she figures out what he is trying to get at and rejects the offer. Later, she will overhear his drunken rambling and realize that she was nothing more than a substitute for his real love, Leslie. She leaves him, heartbroken, but is quick to bounce back. James Dean’s Jett is the villain of the picture, but he is also a pitiful creature, unsure of himself even after striking it rich and becoming a powerful man. He never quite gains the confidence a man in his position needs to be ultimately successful in life.

Giant is mostly remembered these days as being James Dean’s final film, but there is so much more going for it than just that. It is a fascinating allegory for America as it navigated the ongoing civil rights movement and looked towards a future where racism was a thing of the past. We’re still not there all these decades later, but it’s a far cry from where we were when this film was made. George Stevens makes many important points about our perceived discriminations and how we can, with some good guidance, fix those discriminations. Leslie represents that aspect of things even as she, too, came from a background in segregation and racial inequality. The final scene with the two toddlers sharing the same land together, their playpen, neither caring that the other was “different,” shows that that kind of thinking is learned, not ingrained in our minds, and that the future generation has a chance to get beyond that if they are taught right from the beginning. It’s an optimistic view on the future and one to strive towards. Getting there would be the ultimate legacy we could leave behind for the next generation. 

Academy Award Nominations:

Best Motion Picture: George Stevens ad Henry Ginsberg

Best Director: George Stevens (won)

Best Actor: James Dean

Best Actor: Rock Hudson

Best Supporting Actress: Mercedes McCambridge

Best Screenplay - Adapted: Ivan Moffat and Fred Guiol

Best Art Direction - Color: Boris Leven and Ralph S. Hurst

Best Costume Design - Color: Moss Mabry and Marjorie Best

Best Film Editing: William Hornbeck, Philip W. Anderson, and Fred Bohanan

Best Music Score of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture: Dimitri Tiomkin

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November 24, 1956

Running Time: 201 minutes

Not Rated

Starring: Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Carroll Baker, Jane Withers, Chill Wills, Mercedes McCambridge, Sal Mineo, Dennis Hopper, Elsa Cárdenas, and Earl Holliman

Directed by: George Stevens