Film

Giant (1956)

Director: George Stevens

Movie review

From Time Out Film Guide

Stevens' sprawling epic of Texan life, taken from Edna Ferber's novel, strives so hard for Serious Statements that it ends up as a long yawn. Dealing with the two men who love Taylor - strait-laced cattle baron Hudson, and the less respectable rancher who strikes it rich with oil (Dean, a strange spectacle in himself as he turns grey) - the film attempts to conduct some sort of attack on rampant materialism, as well as offering an elegy for the times that have a-changed. But the pace is so plodding, and the general effect so stultifyingly unsubtle, that one is left impressed only by the fine landscape photography and Dean's surprisingly convincing portrayal of a middle-aged man. To see the overblown, soft-centred nature of the film, one need only compare it with Sirk's vitriolic account of Texan family life in Written on the Wind.

---

• 
•