Rent Giant (1956)

3.6 of 5 from 128 ratings
3h 13min
Rent Giant Online DVD & Blu-ray Rental
  • General info
  • Available formats
Synopsis:
"Giant" is a movie of huge scale and grandeur in which three generations of land-rich Texans love, swagger, connive and clash in a saga of family strife, racial bigotry and conflict between cattle barons and newly rich oil tycoons. It's also one of the most beloved works of director George Stevens, who won an Academy Award for this film, one of 10 Oscar nominations the film earned.
Actors:
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Directors:
Producers:
Henry Ginsberg, George Stevens
Voiced By:
Nick Adams
Writers:
Edna Ferber, Fred Guiol, Ivan Moffat
Others:
Ivan Moffat, Boris Leven, Moss Mabry, Dimitri Tiomkin, Marjorie Best, Philip W. Anderson, William Hornbeck, Fred Bohanan, Ralph S. Hurst
Studio:
Warner
Genres:
Action & Adventure, Classics, Drama
Collections:
A Brief History of Film Weddings: Part 1, Award Winners, Films & TV by topic, Getting to Know..., Getting to Know: Audrey Hepburn, Glynis & Angela: Ninetysomething Marvels, Memory Lane: Films Set in 1920s, Oscar's Two-Time Club, Oscars: Winners & Losers, Remembering Julian Sands and Frederic Forrest, Thanksgiving and Film!, The Instant Expert's Guide to: Miloš Forman
Awards:

1957 Oscar Best Director

BBFC:
Release Date:
28/07/2003
Run Time:
193 minutes
Languages:
English Dolby Digital 2.0, French Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono, Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
Subtitles:
Arabic, Bulgarian, Dutch, English, English Hard of Hearing, French, German, Italian, Italian Hard of Hearing, Romanian, Spanish
DVD Regions:
Region 2
Formats:
Pal
Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen 1.66:1
Colour:
Colour
Bonus:
  • Feature Length Audio Commentary By Film Critic Stephen Farber, Screenwriter Ivan Moffat and George Stevens, Jr
  • Introduction By George Stevens, Jr
  • Documentary George Stevens: Filmmakers Who Knew Him
  • Documentaries: Memories of Giant and Return To Giant, In Which Cast, Crew and Texans Spin Small and Tall Tales About the Film's Legacy
  • New York Premiere TV Special Hollywood Premiere Featurette
  • Behind The Cameras Segments
  • Original/Reissue Trailers
  • Production Stills
  • Documents Gallery
Disc 1:
This disc includes the main feature
Disc 2:
This disc includes the special features
BBFC:
Release Date:
02/11/2015
Run Time:
201 minutes
Languages:
Brazilian Portuguese Dolby Digital 1.0, Castilian Spanish Dolby Digital 1.0, Czech Dolby Digital 1.0, English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0, French Dolby Digital 1.0, German Dolby Digital 1.0, Italian Dolby Digital 1.0, Latin American Spanish Dolby Digital 1.0, Polish Dolby Digital 1.0
Subtitles:
Brazilian, Castillian, Chinese, Complex Mandarin, Czech, Danish, English, English Hard of Hearing, Finnish, French, German, German Hard of Hearing, Italian, Italian Hard of Hearing, Korean, Latin American Spanish, Polish, Romanian, Swedish, Turkish
Formats:
Pal
Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen 1.85:1
Colour:
Colour
BLU-RAY Regions:
B
Bonus:
  • Feature-length Audio Commentary by Film Critic Stephen Farber, Screenwriter Ivan Moffat and George Stevens Jr
  • Introduction by George Stevens Jr
  • Documentary "George Stevens: Filmmakers Who Knew Him"
  • Trailer
BBFC:
Release Date:
20/06/2022
Run Time:
198 minutes
Languages:
Castilian Spanish Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono, English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Mono, French Parisian Dolby Digital 2.0 Mono, German Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono, Italian Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono, Latin American Spanish Dolby Digital 1.0 Mono
Subtitles:
Castillian, Dutch, English Hard of Hearing, French Parisian, German Hard of Hearing, Italian Hard of Hearing, Latin American Spanish
DVD Regions:
Region 2
Formats:
Pal
Aspect Ratio:
Widescreen 1.66:1
Colour:
Colour
BLU-RAY Regions:
B
Bonus:
  • Commentary by George Stevens, Jr., Ivan Moffat and Stephen Farber

More like Giant

Reviews (1) of Giant

Great film - not the best transfer - Giant review by KW

Spoiler Alert
06/08/2021

I will admit to starting this film with a certain amount of dread. It seemed to me to be one of those films that you want to have seen but never quite feel like watching, a drama that plays out over several generations, but with a length that suggests it might be in real time. The first few minutes were not encouraging, not helped by a bluray transfer that maddeningly alternates between being in pristine focus and blurry all the way through. The ratio might be correct, but I'm not sure that George Stevens' son is entirely correct when he introduces the film on the disc by promising that this is the movie as it was meant to be seen.

Nevertheless, I stuck with this tale of a Texan rancher overly tied to traditional values of the past, and was pleasantly surprised to find a 1956 movie that tackles racism, sexism and poverty in what surely must have been groundbreaking for the time. True, if you were making it now, you would develop the Mexican characters, but this is brave stuff and the altercation in a diner that won't serve non-whites was very on-the-nose for the era.

Elizabeth Taylor, Rock Hudson and James Dean are all splendid and the decision to hire young actors and then age them (rather than have older characters play young, which was the normal convention of the time) really works. The movie has some really modern flourishes, including a memorable scene of drunken despair in which James Dean is shown in longshot muttering into a microphone that happens to have fallen in front of him, his depression bouncing off the walls to shame him.

You couldn't get a movie like this anymore because television has taken over this kind of epic storytelling. The running time is challenging but well-filled; after the first forty minutes or so it never drags, though I wouldn't want to sit through the whole thing without a break. I did wonder how a couple of scenes of small children crying (in one case comically) were pulled off, but perhaps it's best that this remains a movie-making secret.

It took me decades to get around to watching Giant, but it was worth the wait. If a better bluray transfer became available, I would not wait so long to watch it again.

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