Giant
HBOMax (1956)
I had never seen this before, I think I lead into this because of Liz Taylor in Ivanhoe. It took me 3 nights to watch this (it's long 3 hours and 21 minutes). Maybe that colored my perception, as by the end the adjective that came to mind to describe this was ponderous. Which I guess kind of fits the title, but probably wasn't what was intended. The pacing is glacial at times without adding anything appreciable in the bargain. There are a lot of themes at play, too many to give any one of them adequate treatment - racism, feminism, class struggle, transition from old west to new west, marriage, family, greed and corruption. I think the movie suffers a bit as a result. There's some character development for a handful of characters, most notably Bick (played by Rock Hudson), and I like that they don't completely leave their old selves behind.
The racism, marriage, and family themes were the ones that were most fully developed. The discrimination and bigotry of Texan caucasians against Mexicans stood out the most and was surprisingly harshly depicted given the era in which this movie was produced. I have not read the source material, the movie does not paint a pleasant picture of Texas, so I wonder what the author's internal bias was.
The acting is pretty uniformly solid, if not always inspiring. The stand out to me was a young Dennis Hopper as Jordy (son of Leslie and Bick (Jordan) Bennett), he was alive, vibrant and real in ways most of the other characters/actors weren't. It was hard to buy Liz Taylor as Dennis Hopper's mom, though the makeup department did a really good job of aging down/up much of the cast over the course of the movie - Hopper was 4 years younger than Taylor IRL. James Dean was o.k., similarly with Rock Hudson - I was expecting more from both for some reason. I didn't think it'd be possible to vie with a young Liz Taylor in the beauty/sexiness department, but Carroll Baker did (as Luz, the youngest daughter of Leslie and Bick), here again Baker was born a year EARLIER than Liz IRL, so some dissonance there. Baker wasn't just sexy eye candy though, she brought both innocence and wisdom beyond her character's years to the role.
This only won one Academy Award (for best director) of its 10 nominations. Many have viewed that as a big mistake, but on seeing this movie for the first time in 2022, I'm not sure that was as big a crime as some make it out to be. I don't know that this is a must see for anyone but movie historian types. Maybe there are things I missed, or the appreciation lagged due to watching it over 3 evenings, I'm sure someone will be along shortly to set me straight...