Giants
| Movie | |
|---|---|
| German title | Giants |
| Original title | Giant |
| Country of production | United States |
| original language | English |
| Publishing year | 1956 |
| length | 196 minutes |
| Age rating | FSK 12 |
| Rod | |
| Director | George Stevens |
| script |
Fred Guiol , Ivan Moffat |
| production |
Henry Ginsberg , George Stevens Warner Bros. |
| music | Dimitri Tiomkin |
| camera | William C. Mellor |
| cut |
William Hornbeck , Philip W. Anderson ( Assistant Editor ) Fred Bohanan ( Assistant Editor ) |
| occupation | |
| |
Giganten (Original title: Giant ) is a feature film by the American director George Stevens from 1956 . The drama is based on the bestselling novel of the same name by Edna Ferber and was produced by the Warner Bros. film studio . It is the last film with actor James Dean , who died in an accident, and on September 30, 1955 in a traffic accident thus the premiere did not live.
action
The Texas landowner Jordan "Bick" Benedict travels to Maryland to buy horses . On the estate of Dr. Horace Lynnton not only sees the spirited stallion Westwind , but also makes the acquaintance of Lynnton's daughter Leslie, who is soon to be married to the young politician Sir David Karfrey. Leslie is drawn to the handsome rancher , and Bick Benedict is also fascinated by the graceful and educated Leslie. That night Leslie studies all the Texas books she can find around the house and tries to start a conversation about Texas with Bick Benedict at the breakfast table. However, Benedict angered them with the historical fact that Texas was snatched from the Mexicans , which the rancher vehemently denies. A few hours later, shortly before Bicks departure, he and Leslie confess their feelings, and a short time later they both marry in Maryland, while Sir David Karfrey, as it later turns out, finds solace in Leslie's younger sister.
Arrived in Texas, Leslie encounters a completely strange world. In contrast to green Maryland, the country appears as a single barren desert landscape. He lives in Bick's estate, called Reata , which consists of a huge Victorian house in the middle of nowhere, with his older sister Luz. Leslie and the rough-hewn Luz don't get along very well from the start. Luz ran the household on her own for years and is not very happy that her place as the first woman in Reata is being contested. Leslie also makes the acquaintance of the worker Jett Rink, who supports Luz with the work in the house and with the cattle, much to the displeasure of her brother, who had actually thrown him out.
Soon Leslie von Bick is introduced to neighbors and friends of the Benedicts at a small reception and also takes part in the annual cattle count. Jett Rink takes Luz there in the car, and Bick persuades Leslie to drive back with Jett in view of the unfamiliar climatic conditions. Jett awaits Leslie with an unexpected number of compliments during the trip and shows her, among other things. a. the village of Vientecito, home to a large number of Reata Mexican workers.
Leslie is shocked by the hygienic conditions that prevail there. When she - arrived in Reata - wants to talk to Bick about her discovery, she is confronted with terrifying news. On the way back, Luz was thrown from Leslie's horse Westwind, which she had mistreated in her frustration. Brought to Reata seriously injured, she succumbs to her head injuries a short time later. The hastily called second doctor, who arrives too late and can only determine Luz's death, is seized by Leslie. He travels with her to Vientecito and saves the life of the sick toddler Angel, who will fall years later in the Pacific War . During Leslie's absence, Bick shoots the injured Westwind because of a broken leg.
Leslie's commitment to the rights of the Mexican workforce soon stirs her husband's anger. For Bick Benedict, Mexicans are just cheap labor who are supposed to help themselves. The conflict escalates one evening when Leslie insists on attending a political discussion among the men. Her adamant behavior leads to a violent argument with her husband that evening. The next morning, however, the two were reconciled and Leslie surprises Bick with the pleasant announcement that she is pregnant.
In the next few years three children will be born on Reata: the twins Jordan and Judy and the daughter Luz. During this time, Leslie still refuses to be pushed into the ungrateful role of housewife and continues to take care of the well-being of the Mexican workforce. Among other things, she provides the village with its own doctor. Leslie visits Jett Rink on his small piece of land that the late Luz left him and is impressed with how Jett is developing. He has built a house on his land, which he baptized Little Reata , is continuing his education through correspondence courses and is looking for oil .
Gradually, Bick and Leslie are getting further and further apart. At the birthday party of Jordi and Judy there is a scandal when the four-year-old heir is given a pony by Reata, but starts crying when he is shown around on it. Bick, who dubbed his son the future best Texas rancher, feels humiliated by the boy. He grabs him, gets on his horse with Jordi and rides him around the property, which only increases his panic. Bick knows a lot about ranching and how to do business, but he has as little skill in raising children as his own father, the uncle notes. Leslie decides to take the children to live with their parents in Maryland. On Thanksgiving , when Leslie and the children miss their father more than ever, Bick sends his family a telegram. Surprisingly, he appears at the younger sister's wedding and persuades Leslie to come back to Reata.
The rediscovered marital happiness is overshadowed by Jett Rink, who drives past Reata every day to his own piece of land to drill for oil there. But Bick Benedict doesn't like this right of Rink's passage at all. One day, the heavily indebted Rink actually stumbles upon an oil well and immediately confronts Bick with his discovery. Still completely soiled with oil, Jett races in his car through the garden of Reata and shortly thereafter starts a fight with Bick. In a very short time, Jett Rink and his company Jetexas became a rich man and controlled every oil well in the area. He succeeds in closing a deal with Bick, which from then on allows him to also install oil production systems on Reata.
Bicks herds of cattle will soon be led between oil rigs to the pastures and, having become rich through the oil boom, a swimming pool and tennis court will soon extend over Reata . Bick and Leslie are now getting on in years and are confronted with the problem that none of their now adult children want to continue Reata. The eldest son Jordan became a doctor and took the Mexican Juana as his wife. Daughter Judy, who is enthusiastic about agriculture, wants to run her own small farm together with her husband, who has just returned from the Pacific War. Daughter Luz has sympathy for Jett Rink, who has become omnipresent in Texas due to his wealth and plans to open an airport and hotel named after him after the inauguration of a hospital.
The Benedict family and friends travel to Houston on their private plane to see the culmination of Jett Rink's career. However, the celebrations are accompanied by storms; a tornado is predicted according to the weather report. Jett Rink proposes marriage to Luz Benedict at dinner, which she does not accept. Juana Benedict registers in the hotel's beauty salon in the evening before the event, but as a Mexican she is not served at Jett Rink's orders. This stirs her husband Jordan ’s anger, and when Jett Rink enters the ballroom, Jordan tries to confront him. But this is overwhelmed by the hotel staff, and Jett Rink beats the son in front of Leslie and Bick Benedict and the guests present. Bick doesn't want to let this humiliation sit on him and asks Jett to go outside with him. In a pantry, Bick challenges Jett to a fight, but realizes that Jett is way too drunk to fight and leaves the event with his family and friends. A short time later, Jett Rink collapses while drunk when he is supposed to give his speech at the opening of the airport and the hotel. Hours later he lies unconscious in the empty ballroom, wakes up from his fainting and mourns the beautiful Leslie afterwards, whom he could never wrest from Bick Benedict. Luz Benedict witnesses this sad scene and decides never to see Jett again. Bick, Leslie, Luz, Juana and their child drive back to Reata the next morning. During a stopover in a fast-food restaurant, the family should not be served at first because of Juana's origins. However, the glorious name Benedict allows the group to linger in the restaurant. But when a Mexican family enters the fast food restaurant and the owner asks the family of three to leave, Bick stands up for the Mexicans and fights with the owner. Bick Benedict is subject to the much younger restaurant owner. Still, Nick's heroic deed is praised by his wife Leslie, who calls her the greatest deed a Benedict has performed in a hundred years.
History of origin
The film is based on the novel of the same name by Edna Ferber, the publication of which was controversial in Texas in 1952. The main focus of criticism was the issue of racism .
Filming for the film began on May 21, 1955 at the Warner Bros. film studios in Hollywood - Burbank . For the lead roles occupied director George Stevens with Elizabeth Taylor , Rock Hudson and James Dean invariably young actors, although the movie characters aged over twenty years. Usually, older actors were used for these roles and made younger for the scenes, but Stevens decided instead to make his younger actors older as the film progressed. Rock Hudson was 28 years old at the time of filming, and Elizabeth Taylor and James Dean were both 23.
In contrast to other large-scale film productions of that time, Gianten was not made in a wide screen process , such as B. CinemaScope produced.
After production for the opening sequence was relocated to Virginia , filming began in Texas, where most of the filming took place around the small town of Marfa. The production was dominated by a rivalry between the two main characters Rock Hudson and James Dean, but this increased the authenticity of their roles. The relationship between Dean and director George Stevens, who had promised James Dean the role of Jett Rink after the rejection of his preferred candidate Alan Ladd, was also tense. Stevens felt an aversion to actors who tried to experiment during the scenes. The director was also known in Hollywood for his perfectionism. Stevens loved to shoot every scene from many angles, so it took countless shots. James Dean succinctly called Stevens' technique the around-the-clock method.
The conflict between James Dean and director George Stevens culminated on July 23, 1955, when filming had been moved to Los Angeles . Dean didn't appear on the set, and he didn't have a scene to shoot that day. Stevens had Dean tracked down by his assistants - Dean had taken a day off to move into a recently rented house in the San Fernando Valley . George Stevens was so angry that he announced that he would never work with James Dean again. He had a letter written to Warner Bros. containing all the points in which Dean had hindered the shooting. Dean cited physical exhaustion as the reason for his actions, as the shooting of ... because they don't know what they are doing and giants would have taken significantly longer and he only had a three day break between the two productions. Even before the filming of Giants, James Dean had been exhausted and put on a protein diet by a doctor .
George Stevens, who had warned James Dean not to drive a sports car or motorcycle because of the risk of injury while filming giants , learned of the death of his co-star while he was examining the day pattern in a projection room with the film crew and some actors. Some scenes of James Dean had to be dubbed, for which the actor Nick Adams was used and imitated Dean's voice.
reception
Giants celebrated its premiere on October 10, 1956 at the Chinese Theater on Hollywood Boulevard in Los Angeles. The premiere party with two thousand invited guests, including many actors, personalities from various fields and press representatives and an estimated 10,000 onlookers, turned into a great media spectacle. The successful premiere delivered what it promised, and George Stevens' family chronicle grossed an estimated $ 5.4 million in production costs at the American box office alone. This record for Warner Bros. was only in 1978 by the first part of Superman - Trilogy broken, the nearly 41 million US dollars grossed. The critics particularly praised the intense play of the two main actors Rock Hudson and James Dean as well as the direction by George Stevens. The magazine Time Magazine , Photoplay Magazine , Modern Screen and the New York Times recorded giants out as the best film of the year 1956th
Similar to Gone with the Wind for Georgia , the film is now considered the national film of Texas and a classic of the Western genre. Almost 43 years after its premiere, Giganten was voted one of the 100 best American films of all time by the American Film Institute in 1998 .
Reviews
"'Giants' is one of the most important critical self-portrayals of the USA in film, staging and convincing - and determined by great acting achievements: James Dean played his last role in the three and a half hour masterpiece."
Remarks
- Co-star James Dean spent a lot of time filming with dialogue coach Bob Hinkle. Hinkle taught Dean lasso tricks, and both of them hunted rabbits at night during the five-week shoot . By the end of filming, they had shot 261 rabbits and two coyotes .
- The character of Jett Rink is based on the life of the Texan oil magnate Glenn McCarthy (1908–1988). McCarthy was an Irish immigrant who lived with his wealth & a. The Shamrock Hotel opened in Houston in 1949 .
- The hat that Mercedes McCambridge wore during the outdoor shooting had been given to her by the costume department. The accessory was then groomed by actor Gary Cooper to make it look older and more authentic. McCambridge later wrote in her memoir that James Dean liked the hat so much that he threatened to steal it.
- Before Elizabeth Taylor took on the female lead, the part of Leslie was also offered to Grace Kelly .
- George Stevens pledged to work on the film for no salary, but claimed that he would get a percentage of the profits of giants .
- Filming for giants had to be postponed for several months because Elizabeth Taylor was pregnant when the film was scheduled to start.
- For the role of Leslie, Elizabeth Taylor received a fee of 175,000 US dollars, Rock Hudson 100,000 US dollars. In contrast, co-star James Dean received only $ 20,000.
- William Holden and Audrey Hepburn were originally considered for the main roles .
- Since two of James Dean's shirts were lost in the laundry , fellow actress Jane Withers volunteered to clean his last red western shirt herself as soon as it got dirty. In fact, Dean also took advantage of this friendship service.
- Jane Withers and Elizabeth Taylor became friends when filming began. Both knew each other as children, and then as married wives were mothers themselves and loved flowers . When they discovered a yucca plant from the train on the way to Texas , director George Stevens stopped the train and Withers and Taylor received their plants.
- Towards the end of the film, as Rock Hudson's character ages to over 50, the actor had to wear extra weight and padding under long johns to look authentic.
- In one scene where Bick Benedict is drunk, George Stevens actually gave his actor Rock Hudson alcohol to get the actor in the mood.
- The scene in which Jett Rink informs Bick Benedict about his oil discovery was choreographed like a dance. It was one of the longest-planned scenes, and the only one where the entire cast of the film acted together on camera.
- James Dean was dissatisfied with his scenes as an aged Jett Rink. He was so unhappy about the scene in which he was drunk and demolished the ballroom that he asked for one repetition of the other and implored director George Stevens to cut as much of him out of the scene as he could because whatever had to be expressed said by Caroll Baker's expression on the door.
- While driving a highway in Texas, James Dean noticed a car accident in a ditch. An injured African American lay off the highway in the blazing sun. It took an hour for the ambulance to arrive, but during this time James Dean positioned himself so that his shadow fell on the victim and was not exposed to the strong rays of the sun.
- Since Marfa was so small that there was no entertainment for the actors in the evening, they met in the rented house of actress Jane Withers and held Monopoly marathons, bridge and croquet tournaments there. James Dean was rarely seen with the so-called Withers entertainment troupe, but Jane Withers ran into him one evening in one of the back bedrooms. He had gained access through an outdated sash window and insisted that this entrance should always be used. Then Wither's hammer and nails got from another room and barricaded the windows with them.
- There was a party every night at Rock Hudson's house. The crew also stayed at the Alpine Country Club, which had the only swimming pool in the entire area.
- The evening before filming began, Elizabeth Taylor and her husband Michael Wilding invited Rock Hudson and his future wife Phyllis to meet at their house. After a boozy evening and several martinis , the couple found it was 3:00 a.m. and Hudson and Taylor had to get up at 6:30 a.m. and 5:30 a.m. respectively to film a wedding scene. Both actors were very hungover when they filmed the scene at the paddock where they just looked at each other and Bick and Leslie become aware of their feelings. The cloakrooms and hairdressers present on the set were so touched by the scene that many cried, even though Taylor and Hudson were so hungover that they couldn't pretend more than looks.
- Elizabeth Taylor's horse was Highland Dale , who became known as Fury .
Awards
Giants was critically acclaimed and was nominated for ten Academy Awards in 1957 , including the two male leads Rock Hudson and James Dean, who was honored with his second posthumous Oscar nomination after 1956, and Mercedes McCambridge for her role as rough sister-in-law. Despite the high number of nominations, the film could not live up to its role of favorite on Oscar night for 1956 on March 27, 1957 at the RKO Pantages Theater in Los Angeles. Giants lost the award for best film of 1956 to Michael Anderson's comedy Around the World in 80 Days . Only George Stevens' achievement was considered by the Academy Awards, and he was honored with the Best Director Award and the Directors Guild of America. On the other hand, Elizabeth Taylor could not win any prize for her portrait of the educated East Coast beauty Leslie.
In 2005, Giants was included in the National Film Registry , a directory of American films that are considered particularly worth preserving.
Oscar 1957
- Best director
Nominated in the categories
- Best movie
- Best Actor (James Dean)
- Best Actor (Rock Hudson)
- Best Supporting Actress (Mercedes McCambridge)
- Best adapted script
- Best equipment - color
- Best Costumes - Color ( Marjorie Best , Moss Mabry )
- Best cut
- Best film score
Golden Globe Award 1957
- Best Young Actress (Caroll Baker)
Nominated in the categories
- Best film - drama
- Best director
Further
David di Donatello 1957
- Best foreign film
Directors Guild of America 1957
- Best director
Photoplay Award 1956
- Best movie
- nominated for best American screenplay (drama)
media
DVD release
- Giants. Special Edition 2 Disc Set . Warner Home Video Germany 2003 - contains extensive documentation
Soundtrack
- Dimitri Tiomkin , Don George : Giant. Dimitri Tiomkin's Music from the Sound Track of the George Stevens Production . Capitol Records / Capitol-EMI, Hollywood 1989, sound carrier no. CDP 7-92056-2 - Original recording of the film music, recorded by the Warner Bros. Orchestra under the direction of Dimitri Tiomkin and Ray Heindorf
literature
- Edna Ferber : Giants. Roman (original title: Giant ). German by Rudolf Frank . Rütten and Loening, Berlin 2005, 539 pages, ISBN 3-352-00723-3 .
- Edna Ferber: Giant (Perennial Classics) . HarperCollins, New York 2000, ISBN 0-06-095670-4 (English edition).
- Fred Guiol , Ivan Moffat , Edna Ferber: George Stevens' production of Edna Ferber's novel: Giant. Warner Bros. Pictures, Burbank (Calif) 1955 (English edition).
Web links
- Giants in the Internet Movie Database (English)