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giant
Normally, if I was going to write an article in praise of a classic film, I’d rent the film on video (or, more likely these days, buy it on DVD) and watch it again to refresh my memory. Not with Giant. I don’t need to. Every scene, almost every image of its three-and-a-quarter hours running time is burned into my memory.
Rock Hudson towering over the other guests at the Lynnton Thanksgiving dinner at the beginning… the kids crying when they realise the turkey they are eating is a former family pet… the Benedict car uncoupled from the train and left standing in a siding in the middle of a bleak Texas plain when the couple return to Reata after the wedding…
And James Dean - sitting, hat tipped forward, in his wreck of a car, or covered in oil from the gusher that will make him rich, or pulling down the shelves in his drunken fury at the end of the film... Just a couple of bars from Dimitri Tiomkin’s sweeping score can reduce me to jelly.
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FEATURING THREE GREAT STARS AT THE PEAK OF THEIR CAREERS AND A
LEGENDARY DIRECTOR WHO WON AN OSCAR FOR THE FILM, GIANT GETS A
SPECIAL SCREENING AT CANNES THIS YEAR AS PART OF THE AMFAR BENEFIT. NICK RODDICK GETS ALL NOSTALGIC ABOUT A MOVIE THAT REALLY IS LIKE
THEY DON’T MAKE ‘EM ANY MORE.
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Giant occupies a special moment in my discovery of cinema. I would never claim it was one of the best films ever made, but it features in my top 10 favourite movies of all time because it turned me on, aged 11, to the epic scope of which Hollywood was capable and to the epic landscapes of the American southwest, both of which I still love to this day.
Giant, I later discovered, came at one of those watershed moments in Hollywood history when the power of the studio system could briefly be combined with the single-minded determination of a great director - and George Stevens was certainly great and just as certainly single-minded, insisting that all his stars remain on location throughout Giant’s 16-week shoot (James Dean was far from happy) and paying meticulous attention to every small detail of setting, costume and performance. He even, according to one source, chose the cattle.
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