Giant 4K 1956 Ultra HD 2160p

Story Movie

Texas farmer Bick Benedict travels to Maryland for a prize stallion. There he meets the woman of his dreams, Leslie, and marries her. The young couple returns to their ranch, where Leslie must adjust to life in a changed environment.

The new rancher breaks the heart of Jett Rink, an oil tycoon. An already bitter rivalry between the two Texas families heats up.

Review 4K Movie

In 1956 George Stevens produced on the big screen a grand, three-hour-long Texas epic, aptly titled The Giant, which the people of the state raved about as a Texas version of Gone with the Wind. Indeed, it is hard to think of another film that pays tribute to the vastness and majesty of the Lone Star State and reveals the complexities of racial, cultural and social problems, steeped in the particularities of the Texan mentality, in a leisurely, thorough, good old-fashioned movie manner. The viewer follows the characters from the 1920s, when a dashing and gallant Texan, Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson), a wealthy hereditary cattle farmer, brings his violet-eyed beautiful wife, Leslie (Elizabeth Taylor), from distant green Maryland. A refined, educated and sensitive girl with a strong character begins a new life thousands of miles from her native home on the huge Benedict family ranch, where she will have to get used to the dusty desert heat of Texas and learn to get along with her husband's sister, who has been an indispensable assistant to her brother for years, and sees his young wife as a threat to her status as the mistress. Leslie seems best understood by Jett Rink (James Dean), also an outsider, a very young worker at the Benedicts' ranch, shy and moody, silent and hopelessly in love with her. After an unexpected tragedy, Jett inherits an abandoned piece of land on the ranch, which will ultimately change the fortunes of everyone involved in the Texas epic.

Based on Edna Ferber's novel of the same name, 'Giant' reveals themes that she raised more than 60 years ago but are still relevant today. These relate to the booming oil industry in Texas in the first half of the 20th century leading to the emergence of colossal fortunes, illustrated in the film by a violent confrontation between Jett and the Benedict family over the ownership of a land rich in liquid black gold deposits. Other key themes were the pursuit of the American Dream and the price one pays for it, immigration and the fight against racism. From his earliest days in Texas, Leslie relentlessly confronts the unjust treatment of Bick and his family by Mexican immigrants living in unacceptable conditions and doing the toughest work on the ranch. The inner healing of racial prejudice, based on disdain for people of color or who speak with accents, is a long process, like squeezing a slave out of oneself one drop at a time. It will take decades for Bic Benedict, a pioneer descendant who has absorbed from his mother's milk the concept of honor and dignity along with his limitations and prejudices, to understand the unworthiness and unacceptability of such treatment of minorities. He only fully understands this when his son marries a Mexican girl. For all its epicness, 'The Giant,' covering several decades in the life of one family in which the children choose for themselves roads quite different from those their parents had planned for them, acts as a precursor to many popular television series of the future. The film achieves its greatest psychological depth in adding new colors to the portrait of the increasingly embittered and disillusioned Jett, to whom oil has brought him unheard-of wealth, making him the owner of hotels, factories, newspapers, steamships. Even countries, if he had only wished. But it did not bring him one inch closer to his one and only unattainable love.

The shortcomings of 'Giant' are, perhaps, an extension of its own merits. The film is remarkably long, unhurried, even overly slow and unwieldy. The introductory scenes are somewhat lengthy, and we could have done without them without detriment to the development of the narrative. As the story begins to unfold, however, the film feels crowded, despite the generous screen time. Because of the overcrowding, some of the story lines turn out to be abruptly clipped, untold. Perhaps an ideal adaptation of "The Giant" would have been a dylogy, which would have helped to spread the material more evenly and smoothly. But for all its flaws, especially noticeable almost 60 years after its release, by any Hamburg score, 'Giant' deserves its place in film history because the 24-year-old James Dean, who played his deepest and most complex role in 'Giant', which became posthumous for him, makes you forget about any shortcomings with his performance. The emotional tension Dean brought to the role of Jett, the compelling ambiguity of his character, whose image the young actor has colored with emotion, ambition, vulnerability and, in the end, the tragic realization of the meaninglessness and desolation to which those ambitions led, make one reflect sadly on what cinema has lost after his such early departure. Dean's innovative style differed sharply from Rock Hudson's classically Hollywood acting, giving the conflict between their characters an intense reality. Just as Bick is the flesh of old Texas and Jett the new face of the state, Hudson and Dean embodied two Hollywood personalities: the screen star, outwardly spectacular but not looking for depth in his character, and the Artist, the artist who creates the image from within. Hudson faithfully and truthfully portrayed the process of change that Bick went through, but Dean, having completely dissolved into his character, practically hijacked the film. Now we can only speculate what heights Dean would have reached in his profession had he lived longer. Who knows, maybe J.D. Salinger would have allowed 'Catcher in the Rye' with Dean as Holden Caulfield to be brought to the screen? To this day, Dean seems to be the only actor who wouldn't just play Holden. He was Holden, lonely, vulnerable, in the absence of love and understanding, a rebel against falsehood, hypocrisy and lies. Any role would have been within his grasp: Gatsby, Romeo, Raskolnikov, Hamlet... But the routines are well thought out. But the end of the road is inevitable. Those whom the gods love, they call young to the Date in Samarra, which on September 30, 1955 became Cholame, an inconspicuous dot on the map of California. The silver Porsche 550 "Spyder," in which the rebel drove east of heaven for no reason, erupted in a burning star to remain a giant. Forever.