Giant (film)

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Giant
Giant film poster
Directed by	George Stevens
Produced by	Henry Ginsberg George Stevens
Written by	Edna Ferber Fred Guiol Ivan Moffat
Starring	Elizabeth Taylor Rock Hudson James Dean
Music by	Dimitri Tiomkin
Distributed by	Warner Bros.
Release date(s)	November 24, 1956
Running time	201 min.
Language	English Spanish
IMDb profile

Giant is a 1956 drama film and was directed by George Stevens. The movie was adapted by Fred Guiol and Ivan Moffat from the novel by Edna Ferber. It stars Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson, James Dean, Carroll Baker, Jane Withers, Chill Wills, Mercedes McCambridge, Dennis Hopper, Sal Mineo, Rod Taylor and Earl Holliman. Giant was the last of James Dean's three films as a leading actor.

Spoiler warning: Plot and/or ending details follow.

1 Plot
2 Awards
3 Trivia
4 External links

[edit] Plot

The story begins when Bick Benedict (Hudson), the head of the rich Benedict ranching family of Texas, goes to Maryland to buy a stud horse. There he meets and courts Leslie (Taylor), the socialite girl who becomes his wife. After their honeymoon, the pair travel back to Texas to start their life together on the gigantic family ranch named Reata. Leslie acclimates herself to the rougher lifestyle of the Texas ranch and the autocratic manners of the Texas ranch owners. Luz (McCambridge), Bick's sister, and Leslie don't get along as each tries to run the family mansion in their own style. Jett Rink (Dean) the family handyman, is jealous of the Benedict wealth and timidly flirts with Leslie. Jett shows his mistrust of the Texas land-barons by opining to Leslie that they cheated the local Mexicans (and later white immigrants) of their land rights. Bick and Leslie give birth to a pair of fraternal twins, Judy and Jordan.

Luz dies in a ranching accident, and as part of her will, Jett is given a small plot of land within the Benedict ranch. Bick, always viewing Jett as a nuisance, tries to buy back the land. Jett chooses to keep the fenced off waterhole as his small home. He starts oil prospecting on his property when he finds oil on the surface by chance. When he gets his first gusher, he immediately barges into the Benedict house openly proclaiming his rivalry with Bic by stating that he will be richer than the Benedicts and openly leers at Leslie. Bick and Jett have a fistfight and Jett runs off. Later Leslie gives birth to a younger daughter named Luz Jr.

In the years leading up to the World War II, Jett starts an oil drilling company that makes him one of the wealthiest people in the country. During this time, Bick resists the lure of oil wealth preferring to remain solely a rancher. Jett visits the Benedicts to convince Bick to allow oil production on their land to help the war effort. During this visit, Luz Jr, now a teen-aged girl and Jett start flirting. Once oil production starts, the wealthy Benedict family becames even wealthier. As a sign of their increasing wealth, the arid range land besides their house is first covered with a lawn and later an in-ground swimming pool and tennis court are added.

In the postwar years, family tensions in the Benedict household revolve around how the parents want to bring up their children. Leslie wants to school the daughters as East Coast socialites while Bick is demanding that their son be trained as a rancher with the hope that one day the son will take ownership of Reata. These plans go amiss when Judy and Jordan have their own future plans.

When Jett Rink is about to open an airport named after himself and a large hotel, the Benedict/Rink rivalry comes to a head. When the Benedicts arrive for the opening celebrations, they are shocked to find Luz Jr. and Jett Rink have been dating.

The movie portrays how the oil industry transformed the Texas ranchers into the super rich of their generation. As an example of their great wealth, by the end of the movie the Benedicts own their own airliner as their family plane.

A major sub-plot of the movie is the racism against Mexican Americans in Texas during the period. When Leslie arrives at Reata, she is shocked by the living standards that the latinos have to deal with. Her son Jordan marries a latino woman and has to face her mistreatment by anglo society. A latino boy growing up in the squalid slums of the Reata ranch is shown going to war. He is later treated as a war hero at his funeral in the same slum. At the end of the movie, Bick is shown to be the better man when he confronts his own racial attitudes. Jett, on the other hand, never overcomes his own insecurities about growing up poor and continues the cycle of racism.

[edit] Awards

Giant won the Academy Award for Directing and was nominated twice for Best Actor in a Leading Role (James Dean & Rock Hudson), Best Actress in a Supporting Role (Mercedes McCambridge), Best Art Direction-Set Decoration, Color, Best Costume Design, Color, Best Film Editing, Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture, Best Picture and Best Writing, Best Screenplay - Adapted.

In 2005 the film was selected for preservation in the United States National Film Registry. See List of films preserved in the United States National Film Registry.

[edit] Trivia

Much of the film was made in and around the remote town, and dry plains of the Marfa, Texas region.
The film earned James Dean his second and last Academy Award nomination, of three starring roles. He died before Giant was released. Nick Adams was called in to do some voice-over dubbing for Dean's role.
The fictional character Jett Rink was based in part of oil tycoon Glenn Herbert McCarthy (1907 - 1988). Author Edna Ferber met with McCarthy when she booked a room at the Shamrock Hotel to which the novel and film were based. In the film, the fictional Emperador Hotel was based on the former Shamrock Hotel (known as the Shamrock Hilton after 1955) in Houston, Texas.