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Video Review |
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Last Updated 07/08/03
Email: robitai@our-town.com
“Giant” and the Texas Myth
This summer at the Cannes Film Festival, a benefit for AIDS research sponsored a special screening of the 1956 film classic “Giant.” I’m fairly sure that for many of the Europeans in the audience, the version of Texas captured in the movie gave them an enduring picture of our state. In their minds, we’ll forever be a flat, West Texas landscape dotted with oil wells and running rampant with big men in cowboy hats and leggy women.
“Giant” has been hailed as an epic, and it is. Weighing in at just over two hundred minutes, by today’s standards it’s slow. Filmmaker George Stevens took his time developing the characters and etching the details of their full and tumultuous lives.
Based on Edna Ferber’s novel of the same name, “Giant” chronicles the story of the Benedict clan. From the courtship between Southern bell Leslie Lynnton (Elizabeth Taylor) and Jordan “Bick” Benedict (Rock Hudson) to the oil field frenzy, life on the ranch has to change with the times.
The events surrounding the Benedicts have elements that every family shares, but theirs are bigger. Making the shift from cattle to oil creates conflict for Bick, who holds out for ranch tradition. Cattle just seem better than oil. Son Jordan (Dennis Hopper) marries a woman of Spanish ancestry (Elsa Cárdenas) and has to confront small-minded bigots on a regular basis. Former ranch hand Jett Rink (James Dean) drills on his inherited half-acre of Riata ranch land and strikes oil. As a down and out ranch hand, he’s captivating. As a rich oilman, he’s drunk. Leslie Benedict (Elizabeth Taylor) spends her time running interference and the ranch.
The movie stars have to share the scene with the landscape, but they fair well. Rock Hudson has an easy pace that makes his thoughtful, measured manner almost sublime. Elizabeth Taylor is – well, Elizabeth Taylor. James Dean’s performance was his last, and it’s testament to what could have been had he lived to make more movies.
The newly released remastered DVD of “Giant” has a long list of special features, including interviews and scenes from the original Hollywood premier. It’s a celebration of the movie and the only state in the union big enough to have its own mythology. We have the bragging rights; we may as well use them. After all, I always tell those Europeans, “Yeah, sure. Texas is everything you think it is. I live in the Cowboy Capital of the World.”
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