Giant

Year: 1956

Grade: C-

Country: USA

Director: Stevens

Review

i’ve only seen a couple george stevens films, but i’ve seen enough to know that he has talent. shane is a remarkable film, and this is not. more than three hours of melodrama and sentimentality that is hardly earned. there are moments that work (hudson looking at taylor as her sister gets married), but the majority of the film plods on in the hope that it has you, when it never really does. certainly there are some fine performances and some good cinematography, tiomkin also contributes a good score, unfortunately these aren’t substitutes for good storytelling or, rather, a good story. the point that power corrupts is belabored over the course of the film and is never as resonant as it is in something like grapes of wrath (which is almost two hours shorter). the second half of the film moves at such a brisk pace (though somehow manages to stay boring) that you wonder if the film wasn’t supposed to originally be five hours long. the first half of the film covers a couple years and the second half of the film covers about twenty. we’re never lost – hair is more gray, oil fields are more developed, etc., but skipping that much time in an epic seems to me a disservice. at the same time, i don’t think i could have taken much more of this film so maybe it was good to edit it the way they did.