Monday, Oct. 22, 1956

The New Pictures

Giant (George Stevens;Warner). Texas, as the saying goes, is a state of mind; and as such, it is not bounded by thirtysix-thirty and the Rio Grande. Indeed, the bestselling 1952 novel by Edna Ferber, on which this picture is based, bellowed from the bookstalls that Texas in modern times is a microcosm of materialism, a noisome social compost of everything that is crass and sick and cruel in American life. Texas bawled like a branded dogie when the book was published, not without reason; if Author

Ferber was telling the truth, it was certainly not the whole truth about Texas. And in the film, though Director George Stevens has pulled some of Author Ferber's wilder punches. Texans will probably still find plenty to holler about. But moviegoers in other parts of the world will surely find even more to cheer at. In the hand of a master moviemaker. Giant has been transformed from a flashy bestseller into a monumental piece of social realism.

In mood, in movement, Giant is something the film colony often claims but seldom achieves: an epic. And this epic was achieved by an act of singular artistic courage. At the serious risk of losing the customer's interest--and with it the $5,000.000 production cost of the picture --Director Stevens slowed the pace of his story down to a deep-Texas drawl. With a more than Homeric lentor. almost as though it were inching along in one of those venerable jalopies that still wheeze across the hot pink flats between El Paso and San Antonio, the camera moves for almost 3 1/2 hours through what at first appears to be a flat and featureless tale.

For a while, the pace is distinctly depressing; nothing seems to happen. And then slowly the spectator gets the big idea of this picture; slowly he realizes that he is not supposed to be watching a story. even though in its own sweet time the picture tells a pretty good story. He is supposed to be watching life.

And as a slice of Texas life, Giant is something an audience can really sink its teeth into. As in life, what happens is not so important as how it happens, and thanks to Director Stevens' precise and sensitive control of the whole production --script and setting, color and sound, camera and actor--almost every moment in this movie happens with the sort of one-damn-thing-after-anotherness that carries a conviction of reality. The actors, for example, are amazingly well behaved. Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor, neither of whom has been widely hailed as an outstanding acting talent, keep thoroughly in character throughout long and difficult roles. In a shorter part, Mercedes McCambridge plays with vigor, economy and taste.

James Dean, who was killed in a sports-car crash two weeks after his last scene in Giant was shot, in this film clearly shows for the first (and fatefully the last) time what his admirers always said he had: a streak of genius. He has caught the Texas accent to nasal perfection, and has mastered the lock-hipped, high-heeled stagger of the wrangler, and the wry little jerks and smirks, tics and twitches, grunts and giggles that make up most of the language of a man who talks to himself a good deal more than he does to anyone else. In one scene, indeed, in a long, drunken mumble with Actress Carroll Baker in an empty cocktail lounge, the actor is able to press an amazing variety of subtleties into the mood of the moment, to achieve what is certainly the finest piece of atmospheric acting seen on screen since Marlon Brando and Rod Steiger did their "brother scene" in On the Waterfront.

Yet, despite the blazing up of this lost light, the picture belongs to the director. Scene after scene--a cultivated dinner party, a brawl in a diner, a quarrel between a conventional father and a freethinking son--is worked over with a care for the meanings beneath the meanings on the surface: something that Hollywood almost never takes the time for.

And most of the hidden meanings, as they come shining darkly through, add an undertone of intense irony to the picture, and color its mood with something like ferocity as the climax comes on-- Producer-Director George Cooper Stevens, 51, is a meaty, mild-mannered man who believes in making entertaining movies (A Place in the Sun, Shane) that shine with a high technical polish and say something about the human condition. In his dedication to that creed, Stevens is willing to spend more time than his shooting schedule allows, more money than his budget permits. A perfectionist, he shoots every scene from a multitude of angles, goes to the cutting room with masses of exposed film, spends months editing and assembling the finished product, insists that 25% of the creative process of moviemaking take place in the cutting room.

The product of a turn-of-the-century San Francisco theatrical family, Stevens got his Hollywood start at 19 as a cameraman after his father nipped a budding shortstop by forbidding him to play pro baseball. Young Stevens shot dozens of two-reel comedies, became a gag writer, developed into a director of shorts, made the shorts longer and longer until he had built himself into a director of full-length features. By that time he had a passion for realism and a contempt for cine-moguls. To achieve realism, Stevens has terrified horses into rearing in a mad frenzy for his camera (by turning men disguised as bears on them), stampeded cattle into hurling themselves in panic at wooden barriers (by playing an air hose on them), made babies howl with grief for a comic effect (by ripping toys out of their hands). To ensure his independence, he once had a contract forbidding Columbia Boss Harry Cohn to so much as speak to him about his pictures.

If Producer Stevens had not been as good a businessman as Director Stevens is an artist, Giant might never have been made. Hearing the high Hollywood price on Novelist Ferber's bestseller, Stevens did not even consider bidding for Giant, although he admired it as a story. Later, hearing that there were no Hollywood takers for the novel, he decided to do it if the money went into the film rather than into buying the property. So he persuaded Author Ferber to become his production partner for a percentage of the profits--if there were any. At this point it looks as if Novelist Ferber has made a good bargain too.

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