One Paragraph Movie Review: Giant

One hundred and seventy-eighth film: Giant, James Dean’s last film, released after his death in 1956. This is a big movie in a lot of ways — it’s set in Texas, it covers 25 years of a couple’s life, it’s about big land, big money, big families, and big themes, and it lasts for over three hours, which is really stretching the friendship. It’s less about James Dean and oil than I expected, trailers for the film unsurprisingly showing him smeared greasily and open-shirtedly in grimy crude, and much more about racism, classism, and sexism than I expected. The pivotal scene even shows an ageing Rock Hudson being beaten up in a diner for standing up to a racist cook, and even though the violence is seen as a good and noble thing that really gets Elizabeth Taylor’s juices going, I was impressed by its other astounding-for-the-mid-fifties stances against the other isms. Jimmy Dean’s left toenail could act its way out of a locked safe, and he proves that money can’t buy you either love or realistic old-man make-up. I gasped when Dennis Hopper turned up as just barely a man playing the reluctant heir to a ranch fortune, and anyone reading their way through these knows how I feel about me Dennis. All said, that was a long, engaging, epic, big movie time. Three and three quarter Christmas morning bourbon punchbowls out of five.