The Ultimate DVD Geek: Giant

There are movies, and then there are real movies. A real movie isn’t over in an hour and a half. It transports you to another time and another place and holds you there for a whole afternoon as it takes you through the lives of its characters, across years and even decades. A real movie is big, grand, magnificent and regales you with all the power that movies can wield upon a viewer’s imagination and spirit.

George Stevens’ 1956 production, Giant, is a real movie.

Rock Hudson and Elizabeth Taylor star in the film about a Texas rancher and his bride from the East. The essential narrative template for the film is the story of their marriage, from the day they meet to the time that old age has settled firmly upon them and their grandchildren are bobbing about in a playpen nearby. The ethnic diversity of those grandchildren supplies the film with its final shot and gives the preceding drama its tension, but the film is also a celebration of its location and an exploration of a representative component in the moral complexity of America’s economic development, the transition in Texas from cattle ranching to oil production. One could make a case that nearly all of America’s significant history in the second half of the Twentieth Century was spawned by individuals who are embodied in the film by James Dean’s wildcatting character, whose motivations lose their purity once he achieves his initial goals. The film is by no means perfect. Both Taylor and Hudson were young (Carroll Baker, who plays their daughter in the film, was actually older than Taylor). The makeup used to age them, particularly Hudson, doesn’t work all that well and is not helped by the limitations of the stars’ performances, though where the performances count, in selling the emotional relationship between the two characters, they deliver the material beautifully. And the 201-minute movie’s third act is a downshift instead of an upshift, so that you really start to feel the years have passed as it coasts to its conclusion. Nevertheless, the film is bursting with delightful entertainments and arresting beauty, living up to the promise of its title in every way.

Warner Home Video has released Giant as a Two-Disc Special Edition (23221, $27), in letterboxed format only with an aspect ratio of about 1.66:1 and no 16:9 enhancement. The film appears on two sides of the first platter, with the break occurring at the Intermission point, which is not a bad thing, obligating you to take a pause. The movie was shot with a somewhat weak color stock, so hues are not intense, but the image is very crisp and colors are finely detailed, with rich fleshtones. The stereo surround sound brings a modest dimensionality to some of the music, but otherwise the sounds are centered, with moderately strong tones. There is an alternate French track in mono and optional English, French and Spanish subtitles.

A commentary track runs through the entire film, featuring George Stevens, Jr., who was present for part of the filming, screenwriter Ivan Moffat, who was also on the set a lot, and film critic Stephen Farber. They have time to discuss all aspects of the movie in great detail, with an emphasis on the staging of specific scenes, the cast (including recollections of what happened when Dean was killed the day after he completed his part of the filming) and the movie’s thematic structure.

In addition to the concluding half of the film, the second side of the first platter contains a 45-minute collection of interviews with various Hollywood figures, such as Warren Beatty and Frank Capra, about Stevens. The pieces are essentially outtakes from other documentaries about Stevens, and focus more on such films as A Place in the Sun and The Greatest Story Ever Told than on Giant, but it is still a worthwhile description of Stevens’ stature and talent. There are two primary documentaries on the second platter, Memories of Giant, which was made in 1998 and runs 51 minutes, and Return to Giant, which is brand new and runs 55 minutes. Both have unique passages, but both also draw from the same well of interviews and archival footage. Return is the better of the two, describing the context and background of the Edna Ferber novel upon which the film was based and working its way through the film’s production in an even-handed manner. Memories, as the title implies, is less systematically organized, but between the two of them you get a very complete picture of what the production was like and how the film came together.

Then the real fun stuff begins. There is a 29-minute black-and-white television broadcast of the film’s New York premiere, with various dignitaries coming before the camera to be interviewed by Chill Wills and Jayne Meadows. The highpoint is when Meadows mistakenly identifies Dennis Hopper’s date, Joanne Woodward, as his wife and Hopper sheepishly corrects her, but the whole program is a marvelous parade of Fifties glitz and glamour. There is also a 4-minute black-and-white newsreel piece on the Hollywood and New York premieres, a half-minute newsreel piece about the beginning of the film’s shoot, a nice 6-minute black-and-white TV promo with Gig Young about the film’s location, another cute 6-minute Young segment focusing on composer Dimitri Tiomkin, a wonderful 7-minute montage of unique and beautifully composed production photos (there’s one of Dean and Ferber doing rope tricks together), a fascinating 4-minute montage of production memos, four trailers, and several production essays.

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