A Gigante of American Cinema

I watched a 1950s classic over the weekend, Giant, the saga of a Texas ranching family. Great stuff. The film, starring Elizabeth Taylor (at her gorgeous best) and Rock Hudson (at the height of his gorgeousity, as well as the height of his height), spans some 30 years in the lives of the Benedict family, wealthy landowners and cattle ranchers. One of the subtexts of the movie is the strangely cozy and cozily strained relationship between the Mexican ranch hands and the Texan ranchers. The ranchers certainly have a fair command of Spanish (they give grammatically correct orders and berate their servants in excellent Castilian) and there is a muted affection on both sides. A muted affection, yes, but also an appalling lack of awareness—or is it a lack of interest? —of the abysmal living conditions of the hard working and impoverished ranch hands.

The Rock Hudson character, ‘Bick’ Benedict, undergoes the most interesting character development, by far. When his new bride Lesley (Taylor) gets off the train from Maryland and speaks warmly to one of the Mexican ranch hands, Hudson gruffly hurries her along. Over the years, Lesley befriends and helps the ranch hands. Bick stands by; he doesn’t stand in her way…(doesn’t help either). Twenty some years later, their doctor son Jordan (played by a puny and redheaded Dennis Hopper – Easy Rider was still a decade away, folks) marries Juanita, a beautiful and noble Mexican health care worker. Lesley enthusiastically welcomes her new daughter-in-law; Bick is not quite sure what to make of it all, but—give him credit—he welcomes Juanita, nonetheless.

The resulting offspring, the adorable Jordan III, inherited his mother’s dark beauty (thank God) and not his father’s geeky redheadedness. Typically, the grandson breaks the ice, and his grandfather’s reserve. As the movie draws to a close, Bick not only seems to have dropped his guard about race; he seems oblivious to how his fellow white folks treat Mexicans…until his ire is provoked by a little name calling. Just as the Benedict family is settling in for a lunch of cheeseburgers at Sarge’s diner, the owner kicks out a humble Mexican family at a neighboring table. Bick/Hudson tries to cajole Sarge into letting them stay, to no avail. When Sarge calls the Mexicans “wetbacks”, Bick throws the first punch. As the two men trash the diner and pummel each other, “The Yellow Rose of Texas” plays in the background. (That scene alone is worth the price of admission.)
What I found truly remarkable about Giant is how aware the filmmakers were of the times in which they lived—and how fearlessly they portrayed an uncomfortable truth.