Jordan Benedict - - Giant (1956)

Giant has been described as a movie about race, specifically one of the first movies to highlight the grim treatment of Hispanics in the Southwest. No doubt true. But racism in Giant is just another manifestation of alienation. George Stevens made movies about struggling outsiders attempting to bust into an imagined mansion of recognition and love. Jett Rink (James Dean) is the outsider and rebel; however he is just as much a racist as Bick Benedict (Rock Hudson) before his transformation in the final reel.  And that transformation integrates Benedict back into his home and family and defines his courage. The agent of this is his son, Jordan Benedict, played by Dennis Hopper.

This was a major motion picture role for Hopper - - much more important than Rebel Without A Cause - - and he was appearing with his new big brother, James Dean, only one picture past from Dean’s break-through role in East Of Eden. They were four years apart but Hopper saw him as a mentor. This burgeoning influence can be seen all over Hopper’s tormented characterization in Giant. While Hopper gives not near as bizarre a performance as Dean’s Jett Rink, there was clearly some deep communication going on between the actors. It is this tension, between the obedient young contract player Hopper was and the Method madman that he was becoming, that powers his performance. One is reminded of Dean’s great howl in Rebel Without A Cause, “You’re tearing me apart!”

By using this power, Stevens and Hopper define the agony of Jordan Benedict, who must buck his father’s expectation to become a doctor, like his maternal grandmother. The civilizing and subversive force of his mother (Elizabeth Taylor) is pollinated by the anarchic force of Jett Rink, a coupling that cannot occur in actuality but supplies an endless source of tension on Riata Ranch. Both of the Benedict children reject the destructive and pointless rebellion that infuses Dean’s character for the more compassionate one of their mother’s.

This role was essential to Hopper’s development of an actor, both as an introduction to the Method, which he would directly learn from Strasburg in a few years, and the completing of what would become his artistic vision, the torture of the outcast, who can not accept the part in life written for him, but finds the full degradation of anger untenable. In the end, he softens the excess of Dean with Taylor’s deep and fundamental empathy. Although many horrendously difficult times awaited Hopper, it was this film that gave him the foundation that would redeem his talent.