Review of Giant (1956) by Veronique K — 20 Feb 2009

"giant" is james dean's final screen presence, perhaps the leastly empathetic one. it's an overlong "masterpiece" of george stevens who brings the dynamic trio of taylor, hudson and dean together to delineate a epic of texas. excessively ambitious, but the plots're teetering after the first hour and it almost flops.

The epic sets off with mighty texasian ranch baron(hudson) who discovers the breathbreaking beauty from the daughter(taylor) of a prestiged family who sells the horse he wants in the east coast. then the dashing baron walks away with the horse as stallion and the daughter as wife. but this woman is more brightful and un-tamed than what he expects, so they quarrel over their perceptions on various local customs. meanwhile the insolent, outrageous worker of his sister's (dean) harbors a severe crush on his lovely wife, and this petite worker inherits a small piece of lean land of baron's according to his sister's will, so this insignificant man gets to be the biggest texasian tycoon to emulate him.

The first one hour of the film is highly watchable for its grappling tension between the trio, and the smoldering covet of dean's character for taylor is a great stimulant to defy rock hudson who is literarily the stance of patriachy. and mercedes maccambridge gives an impressionable cameo as hudson's rough-to-the-bone "cowgirl" sister who wants to teach taylor a lesson of how to be a competent texasian wife, but maccambridge who may be the most interesting character dies too soon to redeem the giant from being a lump of ponderous work.

The gratuitous feast for the eye would probably be the youthful looks of taylor and hudson while james dean's boyish cuteness is shrouded by the muddy cowboy hat. when the trio play out the senile part with grey dust sprinkled over their ebony hair, the movie loses its charm. additionally, it is comically absurd to see james dean in overcoat with oversized shoulder-paddings to dwarf his height. the whole flick remains in a certain interesting light until the character began to age and their kids grow into goofy teenage bores. who cares how those kids are gonna be? give me back the dynamic trio in their glowing beauty.

The first hour passes, the story starts to go flat with all those politically righteous issues, such as racial bigotry, the demise of ranch business and the swarming oil-pumping fever. and it's very corny and contrived to assert racial equality by having the son married to a hispanic woman, then the patriach fistfights in a local restaurant to claim the notion of civil rights. also it attempts to bare the wasted hollowness of the nouveau riche by having dean's character rot in alcoholism an his un-fulfilled yearnings for elizabeth taylor, so the shrewd capitalist who is smart enough to conquer the market insightfully must be pathetic loser who groans like a wretched baby? so the reactionary family, as long as they embrace multiculturalism, could thrive as a whole.

Oddly two actors of "rebel without a cause" also appear in the giant, dennis hopper and "plato", the rebel gay who adores dean. unfortunately the james dean formuli cannot fit into the giant, and my private doubt would be, could james dean play any other character except the stretched reflection of himself? it's like, if he seeks an appropriate niche for his idiosyncrasies, he dominates the show, if not, he vanishes into thin air carrying his personal wound to rush toward the merciless highway then passes for good without even bidding a farewell to others.

(ps).

As I pointed out, the james dean pattern would be eternal defiance to paternality or the void of patriachal recognitions. for the giant, it would be his repugnance to rock hudson who symbolizes the authorized patriach who possesses everything he covets but couldn't get as the void of recognition, even he's got everything, he still mourns over the abscence of the beautiful wife of hudson's that he couldn't have.

Also, the last shooting of giant is the scene dean serves tea to elizabeth taylor, but he got too god-damned nervous to pull it off, but the whole crew of 2000 men were awaiting him to finish, so he took the necessary means to get riddance of his nervousness: take a piss in front of the 2000 crew!!! dean announces, if he has the courage to take a piss in front of everyone, he would also have the guts to finish his last scene with taylor.