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DVD Giant (Two-Disc Special Edition) (Digipack)
They call it Giant because everything in this picture is big, from the generous running time (more than 200 minutes) to the sprawling ranch location (a horizon-to-horizon plain with a lonely, modest mansion dropped in the middle) to the high-powered stars. Stocky Rock Hudson stars as the confident, stubborn young ranch baron Bick Benedict, who woos and wins the hand of Southern belle Elizabeth Taylor, a seemingly demure young beauty who proves to be Hudson's match after she settles into the family homestead. For many the film is chiefly remembered for James Dean's final performance, as poor former ranch hand Jett Rink, who strikes oil and transforms himself into a flamboyant millionaire playboy. Director George Stevens won his second Oscar for this ambitious, grandly realized (if sometimes slow moving) epic of the changing socioeconomic (and physical) landscape of modern Texas, based on Edna Ferber's bestselling novel. The talented supporting cast includes Mercedes McCambridge as Bick's frustrated sister, put out by the new "woman of the house"; Chill Wills as the Benedicts' garrulous rancher neighbor; Carroll Baker and Dennis Hopper as the Benedicts' rebellious children; and Earl Holliman and Sal Mineo as dedicated ranch hands. --Sean Axmaker
Review(s): DVD Giant (Two-Disc Special Edition) (Digipack)
James Dean 's last Opus!
Maybe this was the most lucid and great saga that portraits as anyone else the ferocious competence 's spirit between two men fighting one each other in all fields; they love the same woman, underlining two angry Empires: cattle and the raising Oil enterprise: past and present: two ways of facing the world and life will meet at the sands of the life. Dean takes a glorious advantage respect Hudson and that is the only negative handicap. But George Stevens as a good captain arrives with this Gargantuan movie ( 198 min.) to a secure port.
Dean's Last Grand Dance
Here, in this 1956 "epic" directed by George Stevens, based on a "blockbuster" 1950s bestseller by Edna Ferber, you can see, in one package, everything that had been wrong for years in both American historical fiction, and in most films about the American settlement experience. One would like to be kinder to the obviously sincere and genuine effort that went into this by many, including Stevens at the height of his powers, Elizabeth Taylor still in youth's bloom, James Dean and Mercedes McCambridge. But if you are going to put out a movie this long, much less something "big as Texas," it better cohere.
Instead, we are left here with a truly "giant" hulking piece of Hollywood junk, including a stereotypical "all star" cast whose hair actually turns blue as they "age" from youth to senility in four hours. No scene is too big for Stevens' cinemascope lens, as it drifts from Kentucky bluegrass to Texas flatlands with yawning, boring monotony. The empty lunkhead characters go through all their tedious and predictable paces, to the accompaniment of a typically grandiose soundtrack. Finally, a "politically correct" lesson is tagged on at the end to give you a very heavy-handed 1950s style lesson in "racial tolerance"-- the only problem being that Hudson's character has to instantaneously, magically, and entirely change for this to happen, without a blink, despite the true mountain of evidence already stacked up against such a transformation. Praiseworthy as the sentiment is, this is propaganda, not art. Perhaps they figured you were already so asleep you would not notice.
From a Hoosier and a Yankee to boot: Texas deserves better. Someday hopefully somebody will be up to it.
Yet despite all this and worse, the film is saved -- even for repeated viewing -- by the inspired performance of James Dean, who works against Stevens and the putative "star" Rock Hudson and the other "stars," in every scene in which he appears. This is a performance like very little else in movie history, and through it Hoosier-born Dean leaves his own teaching on the sort of idiosyncratic oddballs and dream-seekers who had a lot to do with starting this country, their often tragic central flaws and doom. In one scene after the next Dean pulls this Hollywood trash heap together and electrifies it, makes it something grandly ominous and terribly formidable. And if you grew up in the heartland or west of here, you will especially enjoy just watching him: his performance is a boy's dance to the joy of owning land, a man's forcing it, by hard exploitation, into an extension of a lunatic self.
The five minute scene of Dean solo, covered by black gold he has just struck on his little dogpatch, ecstatic against the bare horizon, is in itself one of the greatest films in American history. If possible, this film should be seen on as big a screen as possible to get this moment's awesome power, which is as good as Hollywood ever got. It says as much or more than Huckleberry Finn or all the Frank Norris novels about the old theme of the corrupting possibilities of our "the American dream," and Dean does it with physicality alone. The rest of this clunker thus hardly matters. Dean's dance makes up for all of it.
An epic celebration of Texas life from George Stevens
This weekend marks the 50th anniversary of actor James Dean's tragic auto accident-September 30, 1955. He had no less than three masterpieces made when he died-EAST OF EDEN in release, REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE about to be released (or vice-versa), and GIANT in post-production. Impressively, he netted two Best Actor Oscar nominations in consecutive years (1955-1956). To mark Dean's death, the opulent Castro Theater in San Francisco is having a James Dean mini-film festival over the weekend.
I believe all three of these movies are on letterboxed DVD, though most people erroneously think George Stevens' GIANT (1956) is in wide-screen; it is not, just a mere 1.66:1 ratio. I recommend it to you this weekend on double disk DVD or videocassette for its 50th birthday. It is a modern western from Edna Ferber's episodic novel, set in 1940's and 1950's Texas. It is a Texas of oil wells and land, not big cities, with location work in the little Panhandle town of Marfa. A big mansion sits like an anachronism in the middle of prairie. Cattleman Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson at his best) marries the beautiful city girl Leslie (luscious Elizabeth Taylor). Watching them, often with grease and dirt on his jeans, is drifter Jett Rink (James Dean).
As the 1940's blend into the 1950's, this huge and sprawling 201 minute masterpiece turns Bick and Leslie into parents: sons cattleman Earl Holliman and doctor Dennis Hopper. Bick warms to Holliman, but wants nothing to do with a son who wants to be a doctor, especially one who treats nearby Mexicans, whom Bick has contempt for. ("Leslie, those people have their own doctor." "THOSE people, THEIR doctor, OUR doctor, what does that mean?" says Leslie with disgust at her racist husband.) Independent Leslie sides with Hopper and even goes with him when an Obregon baby gets sick on Mexican land. Meanwhile, Jett Rink has been given a small piece of land on the large Rietta ranch, an inheritance when a close friend dies. The land sprouts oil gushers and Jett eventually becomes rich.
After an intermission around the 110 minute mark of this very engrossing movie that won Strevens a Directing Oscar (and a whopping NINE other nominations!), we are one generation further. Doctor Hopper has married a Mexican wife, and they have a cute Mexican baby; even the little baby earns Bick's contempt. But so does rancher son Holliman's daughter (Carroll Baker). She is getting romantic with an aging millionaire Jett Rink, who bears an uncanny resemblence to Howard Hughes. Jett is rotting before our eyes; it is a stunning James Dean performance that probably should have won a Best Actor Oscar. We are following a Texas family over several generations, as Bick slowly grows to admire and even like Mexicans, particularly his little grandson in a memorable diner scene.
With glorious music by Dimitri Tiomkin, and a screenplay by Fred Guiol and Ivan Moffat, GIANT is a stupendous filmmaking achievement if you can do its 3 hours and 21 minutes in one long night. But two nights is still workable for such an episodic and sprawling family saga. You may need a THIRD night for all the DVD extras on this valentine to Texas--B&W TV programs on location in Marfa for filming exteriors; an audio commentary by no less than critic Stephen Farber, writer Moffat, and George Stevens, Jr; a documentary appreciation for George Stevens by directors who knew him; Hollywood and New York premieres on kinescope; original and reissue theatrical trailers; publicity material and poster art; and reflections on the film's enduring legacy after half a century.
Whether you watch it to honor George Stevens' directorial artistry, maybe Rock Hudson's best performance, a Texas-style birthday party, or as a remembrance of James Dean's untimely death and staggering talent, GIANT is one heck of a western epic and family saga. In fact, it is probably worth owning on DVD because you will watch it often, especially with so many marvelous bonuses. Here is to GIANT's 50th birthday!
Related DVD's Giant (Two-Disc Special Edition) (Digipack)
When people think of James Dean, they probably think first of the troubled teen from Rebel Without a Cause: nervous, volatile, soulful, a kid lost in a world that does not understand him. Made between his only other starring roles, in East of Eden and Giant, Rebel sums up the jangly, alienated image of Dean, but also happens to be one of the key films of the 1950s. Director Nicholas Ray takes a strikingly sympathetic look at the teenagers standing outside the white-picket-fence '50s dream of America: juvenile delinquent (that's what they called them then) Jim Stark (Dean), fast girl Judy (Natalie Wood), lost boy Plato (Sal Mineo), slick hot-rodder Buzz (Corey Allen). At the time, it was unusual for a movie to endorse the point of view of teenagers, but Ray and... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): James Dean - Natalie Wood Director(s): Nicholas Ray DVD Release Date: Released the 22 January 2002 Special Order
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East of Eden is an acknowledged classic, and the starring debut of James Dean lifts it to legendary status. John Steinbeck's novel gave director Elia Kazan a perfect Cain-and-Abel showcase for Dean's iconic screen persona, casting the brooding star as Cal, the younger of two brothers vying for the love of their Bible-thumping father (Raymond Massey) in Monterey, California, at the dawn of World War I. Massey is a lettuce farmer, striving for market domination with an ill-fated refrigeration scheme. Having discovered that his presumed-dead mother (Oscar® winner Jo Van Fleet) is a brothel owner in nearby Salinas, Cal convinces her to finance an investment that will restore his father's lost fortune, but neither money nor the tenderness of his brother's fiancée... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): James Dean - Raymond Massey Director(s): Elia Kazan DVD Release Date: Released the 31 May 2005 Usually ships in 24 hours
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George Stevens won an Oscar for his 1951 adaptation of Theodore Dreiser's novel An American Tragedy, though the film seems a little overwrought today and even self-parodying at times. Still, Montgomery Clift's performance as a poor lad so drawn to a rich, beautiful girl (Elizabeth Taylor) that he contemplates killing his lower-class fiancée (Shelley Winters) is powerful, sympathetic, and mesmerizing. Taylor makes a strong impression, but Winters is awfully good in the less-glamorous role. The tone of the film is oppressive--the film doesn't exactly breathe with possibility--but there are lots of good reasons to give this movie a visit. --Tom KeoghMore Info about this DVD Actor(s): Montgomery Clift - Elizabeth Taylor - Shelley Winters Director(s): George Stevens DVD Release Date: Released the 14 August 2001 Usually ships in 24 hours
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Looking for a benchmark in movie acting? Breakthrough performances don't come much more electrifying than Marlon Brando's animalistic turn as Stanley Kowalski in A Streetcar Named Desire. Sweaty, brutish, mumbling, yet with the balanced grace of a prizefighter, Brando storms through the role--a role he had originated in the Broadway production of Tennessee Williams's celebrated play. Stanley and his wife, Stella (as in Brando's oft-mimicked line, "Hey, Stellaaaaaa!"), are the earthy couple in New Orleans's French Quarter whose lives are upended by the arrival of Stella's sister, Blanche DuBois (Vivien Leigh). Blanche, a disturbed, lyrical, faded Southern belle, is immediately drawn into a battle of wills with Stanley, beautifully captured in the differing styles of the two actors.... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Vivien Leigh - Marlon Brando Director(s): Elia Kazan DVD Release Date: Released the 18 May 1999 Usually ships in 8 to 10 days
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Elizabeth Taylor has never been sexier than as Tennessee Williams's hot-blooded Maggie "The Cat" Pollitt, prowling around her boudoir in a slinky white slip. That's how you know her alcoholic, ex-football-player husband, Brick (Paul Newman), must have more than just his leg in a cast. It's the 65th birthday of wealthy (but dying) southern patriarch Big Daddy (Burl Ives), and his sons Gooper (Jack Carter) and Brick have come to suck up to him for $10 million in inheritance money. Gooper is a family man and father to a brood of "no-neck monsters"; youngest boy Brick is papa's favorite (as if you couldn't tell from the fellow's names), but hasn't sired progeny. Maggie is definitely in heat, but Brick refuses to sleep with her because he suspects her her of being unfaithful with his best... More Info about this DVD Actor(s): Elizabeth Taylor - Paul Newman - Burl Ives Director(s): Richard Brooks DVD Release Date: Released the 19 September 2000 Usually ships in 24 hours
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