Cinema: The New Pictures, Oct. 22, 1956

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 3½ 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.