Giant: Rock Hudson and James Dean’s epic family drama that lives up to its name

James Dean as Giant’s avoidant ranch-hand Jett Rink: the film’s ‘true star’.
Photograph: Warner Bros./Allstar

“I think Rock Hudson worked best with a big background,” says film historian Steve Hayes in a biography of the Hollywood heart-throb, “in a big melodrama against a big landscape”. It doesn’t get much bigger than George Stevens’ three-and-a-half-hour epic Giant, starring the towering Hudson – who stood 6ft 5in at the height of his fame.

Adapted from Edna Ferber’s 1952 bestseller of the same name, Giant is a film of great conscience and scale, tracing multiple decades of a southern family reckoning with social and political tailwinds on their ranch. Often described as the national movie of Texas, Giant actually begins further east in the state of Maryland where Jordan “Bick” Benedict Jr (Hudson) has journeyed to buy a horse fit for his 595,000 acres of land. There he meets and quickly marries debutante Leslie Lynnton, played by a young Elizabeth Taylor.