Director George Stevens was great at telling a relatively simple story in an epic, grandiose fashion, burying the hidden lead till the conclusion without it being a letdown, or the audience feeling like they've been taken for a long, misleading ride...
GIANT fits its title in scope but the Texas saga, with all the immense sets and widescreen landscapes, ends with a quick fist fight in a small cafe, and is actually - throughout what's a lifetime, decade-spanning melodrama - a morality tale on racism (Whites towards Mexicans)...
Along with Rock Hudson and a posthumous James Dean, this venture, arguably Stevens's greatest achievement, starred one of the loveliest ingenues at that time who, in 1956, was a much better suited to be a showgirl, like in the director's final film fourteen years later, THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN...
And while what happens in Las Vegas stays there, what happens when someone takes a picture only showing their best features is, at a particular age, usually shot from the neck up, and Taylor's top-half is shown, twice during a fifteen second segment of a musical number on an immense Casino stage, inserted in a contrived, phony and downright hilarious fashion...
But don't let this campy "cheat" moment fool you. TOWN isn't a howler, and could have been embarrassing had Taylor not played the role with her usual dignity and finesse - even though a touch of STREETCAR Blanche Dubois might've intensified the character, who, with a high-pitched, pretty doll voice contrasting to a world-weary expression and a few extra pounds, doesn't seem oblivious enough to her own reality...
She's contented, though, living in a small apartment, opening her curtains to reveal either the ghost bones of a pallid Vegas at dawn or those famous neon lights at night, spending afternoons watching Bogart, Cagney or whatever B&W classic happens to be on... Eventually, when this adapted stage play gathers momentum, aided by a sometimes blaring other times reposeful Maurice Jarre jazz score, she effectively glides her way through an intentionally dry and unfeeling romance with Warren Beatty, who's either too young for her, or vice versa...
As the younger male lead, Warren does a good enough job as a glib barroom piano player with a gambling addiction that turns him from a grinning "thousandaire" to being pocket lint poor. Meanwhile, he and Liz share a convenient and talkative relationship in her apartment that Stevens, along with French New Wave cinematographer Henri Decaë, make seem like a world all its own...
According to trivia, since Liz wanted to be near her husband Richard Burton, who was filming a movie in England, most of the interiors were shot overseas, or medium-shot street scenes where Vegas was expensively recreated finished with an eleven-day quick-shoot in Sin City, which obviously included tons of b-roll/actual footage...
Either way, with the exception of a distracting fake backdrop in a fishing boat sequence (albeit with a "classic movie" look befitting Stevens's heyday), it all seems real enough as the characters mean more than their surroundings...
Despite being owned by a town neither can escape from, and only one really wants to: Poor Joe, the epitome of unlucky, keeps needing enough money to split while Taylor, eventually hiding his tip-cash in a "Tough Love" fashion, had been previously waiting around for her married lover, whose picture's set proudly on on her bed-stand table, turning into a punchline of several Beatty quips about beady eyes...
An important symbolic device is the sound of... Ringing: from a random payphone outside Joe's work-bar before Liz first enters and both meet, to a call she just-misses at her own pad after being with him most of that first night, representing her "Ship Coming In," which, as her relationship builds, seems far in the horizon - yet it does eventually dock...
This rather conventional turning point, when Charles Braswell's business-minded everyman asks her hand in marriage, showing hardcopy proof he finally landed a divorce, veers into soap operatic territory...
In one memorable, awkward moment, right before Liz and Warren's first night (or rather, early morning) of lovemaking, she wisps back her dark hair helmet, and says with the soft, sexy voice of a former young ingenue, "Carry me to bed - I like being carried," which doesn't dissolve to the next scene quickly enough - you can almost hear skinny-bone Beatty nervously clear his throat for such an arduous task...
And yet, somehow, these two solo artists, who really have no place being in a movie together, wind up making some pretty nice music together - although, let it be noted that Robert Altman would really nail the gambling addiction five years later in CALIFORNIA SPLIT.
GIANT fits its title in scope but the Texas saga, with all the immense sets and widescreen landscapes, ends with a quick fist fight in a small cafe, and is actually - throughout what's a lifetime, decade-spanning melodrama - a morality tale on racism (Whites towards Mexicans)...
Along with Rock Hudson and a posthumous James Dean, this venture, arguably Stevens's greatest achievement, starred one of the loveliest ingenues at that time who, in 1956, was a much better suited to be a showgirl, like in the director's final film fourteen years later, THE ONLY GAME IN TOWN...
And while what happens in Las Vegas stays there, what happens when someone takes a picture only showing their best features is, at a particular age, usually shot from the neck up, and Taylor's top-half is shown, twice during a fifteen second segment of a musical number on an immense Casino stage, inserted in a contrived, phony and downright hilarious fashion...
But don't let this campy "cheat" moment fool you. TOWN isn't a howler, and could have been embarrassing had Taylor not played the role with her usual dignity and finesse - even though a touch of STREETCAR Blanche Dubois might've intensified the character, who, with a high-pitched, pretty doll voice contrasting to a world-weary expression and a few extra pounds, doesn't seem oblivious enough to her own reality...
She's contented, though, living in a small apartment, opening her curtains to reveal either the ghost bones of a pallid Vegas at dawn or those famous neon lights at night, spending afternoons watching Bogart, Cagney or whatever B&W classic happens to be on... Eventually, when this adapted stage play gathers momentum, aided by a sometimes blaring other times reposeful Maurice Jarre jazz score, she effectively glides her way through an intentionally dry and unfeeling romance with Warren Beatty, who's either too young for her, or vice versa...
As the younger male lead, Warren does a good enough job as a glib barroom piano player with a gambling addiction that turns him from a grinning "thousandaire" to being pocket lint poor. Meanwhile, he and Liz share a convenient and talkative relationship in her apartment that Stevens, along with French New Wave cinematographer Henri Decaë, make seem like a world all its own...
According to trivia, since Liz wanted to be near her husband Richard Burton, who was filming a movie in England, most of the interiors were shot overseas, or medium-shot street scenes where Vegas was expensively recreated finished with an eleven-day quick-shoot in Sin City, which obviously included tons of b-roll/actual footage...
Either way, with the exception of a distracting fake backdrop in a fishing boat sequence (albeit with a "classic movie" look befitting Stevens's heyday), it all seems real enough as the characters mean more than their surroundings...
Despite being owned by a town neither can escape from, and only one really wants to: Poor Joe, the epitome of unlucky, keeps needing enough money to split while Taylor, eventually hiding his tip-cash in a "Tough Love" fashion, had been previously waiting around for her married lover, whose picture's set proudly on on her bed-stand table, turning into a punchline of several Beatty quips about beady eyes...
An important symbolic device is the sound of... Ringing: from a random payphone outside Joe's work-bar before Liz first enters and both meet, to a call she just-misses at her own pad after being with him most of that first night, representing her "Ship Coming In," which, as her relationship builds, seems far in the horizon - yet it does eventually dock...
This rather conventional turning point, when Charles Braswell's business-minded everyman asks her hand in marriage, showing hardcopy proof he finally landed a divorce, veers into soap operatic territory...
In one memorable, awkward moment, right before Liz and Warren's first night (or rather, early morning) of lovemaking, she wisps back her dark hair helmet, and says with the soft, sexy voice of a former young ingenue, "Carry me to bed - I like being carried," which doesn't dissolve to the next scene quickly enough - you can almost hear skinny-bone Beatty nervously clear his throat for such an arduous task...
And yet, somehow, these two solo artists, who really have no place being in a movie together, wind up making some pretty nice music together - although, let it be noted that Robert Altman would really nail the gambling addiction five years later in CALIFORNIA SPLIT.