150 Word Review: 'Giant' (1956)
The stars at night
Giant describes this family drama’s runtime and ambitions: a decades-long soap opera about a cattleman, his fancy East Coast wife, and the mumbly ranch hand who strikes it rich. Director George Stevens’s vision is as big as Texas; he fills every shot with horizons, plains, and a big sky. Even the family mansion, squatting in the middle of beautiful nothingness, is massive. The plot is an early-to-midcentury saga about Texas’s transformation from a sea of mooing longhorns to a wasteland cluttered by oil derricks. There’s a racial subplot about whites and Mexicans.
But the heart and soul -- what propels its three-and-a-half-hour running time -- are its three stars, at the peak of their Hollywood sexiness. Rock Hudson is strapping and stubborn as a Texas aristocrat, and Elizabeth Taylor is his equal. Damn, they’re good-looking. This is James Dean’s final performance; what a shame he died young. He’s gorgeous, yes. But unpredictable.
I had never seen Giant, mostly due to it's running time. I sat down and watched it in 3 installments. It is great. James Dean was so far ahead of his peers in regards to acting... the tragedy of his death is that we didn't get to see him have a full career. This movie plays like one but I would have loved to have seen him as the special guest star on The Colbys.